15 out-of-this-world sci-fi series to watch online in South Africa

Science fiction, or sci-fi, can be one of the broadest, most difficult-to-explain genres in the known (and unknown) universe. It can pretty much be a dumping ground for everything that can’t be neatly slotted in anywhere else. Time travel? Yep, we’ve got that, and alternative universes (AU) too. Spaceships and aliens? In abundance. Robots and artificial intelligence litter the galaxies, as do super powers, monsters and horror, and in some cases even comedy. “Dystopian future” is a popular catchphrase that brings series like The Handmaid’s Tale into the fold.

While the audience is niche, there is a rather large number of Plum Pick-worthy sci-fi series to stream. Here are some of our favourites.

Set in the 25th Century, this series is based on Richard Morgan’s award-winning 2002 cyberpunk sci-fi novel of the same name. The human mind has been digitised and the soul is transferable from one body to the next. People’s minds are stored on “stacks”, discs that live in the back of our necks.

Human bodies are turned into “sleeves”, and all death means is a movement from one sleeve to the next.

Takeshi Kovacs (Joel Kinnaman) wakes up 300 years after he’s killed and given the option to either spend the rest of his new life behind bars (he was a mercenary) or help solve a murder.

In an entertainment world dominated by English-language series from the US and UK, Netflix has plenty to offer from the rest of the world, either in countries’ own languages with subtitles, or dubbed. Better Than Us is Russian, and set in a near future where robots have been integrated into day to day lives.

“It’s cool, though, because they’ve been programmed to follow the First Law, which says they can’t just outright murder all the humans. But what happens when one robot skips that bit of code and then befriends a family?” asks Decider.

“Better Than Us is not another low-budget, you-can-see-the-strings WTF affair … The biggest thing this show has going for it is, without a doubt, the production design. The world feels lived in and, most importantly for what’s ultimately a grounded family drama, plausible.”

Anthology series Black Mirror – referring to the one you’ll find on every wall, on every desk, in the palm of every hand: the cold, shiny screen of a TV, a monitor, a smartphone – was created by Charlie Booker and examines modern society and the consequences of the technologies which we all crave and embrace, whether they are ultimately good for us or not.

Some say we are currently living in the new season of Black Mirror, which is more than a little disturbing.

It can be dark and dismal viewing and there are not many happy endings. Each episode can stand alone but watching in sequence will provide some Easter eggs as a reward for the diligent viewer. A standout episode is San Junipero, which was filmed in Cape Town.

Josh Holloway from Lost and Sarah Wayne Callies from The Walking Dead co-star in this series set in a Los Angeles that has been colonised by aliens and split in two by a huge wall. Spoiler: the aliens are not friendly, and humans are living under a military occupation (said to be based on the Nazis in France in World War II). Our heroes are on a mission to save their one son from the other side of the wall.

Before it was on Netflix, it aired on DStv and I thoroughly enjoyed it. In an interview with Collider, Holloway talked about where things would have gone if Colony had gotten a fourth season, and how he feels about the way his story arc concluded on Lost.

Another one from over the seas, this time from Germany, Dark concerns the aftermath of a child’s disappearance, which exposes the secrets of, and hidden connections among, four estranged families as they slowly unravel a sinister time travel conspiracy which spans three generations. Throughout the series, Dark explores the existential implications of time and its effects upon human nature.

“Succeeding where other series often fail, this third and final season continues its delicate time-traveling balancing act all the way through to a thrilling conclusion,” says Indiewire. “Even before the third and final season… each new wrinkle has arrived with a shock, but also with the storytelling confidence that this is always how it would unfold. Juggling a dizzying amount of causal loops and concurrent timelines and logical paradoxes, Dark has always operated with a combination of precision and patience required to make each new successive detail feel earned.”

This one has deep roots; it’s a reboot of a 1965 TV series, which was adapted from the classic 1812 novel The Swiss Family Robinson, as it follows the adventures of a family of space colonists whose spaceship veers off course and crash lands on an inhabitable (thank goodness) planet.

There, they must contend with a strange environment and battle their own personal demons as they search for a way back home. Lost in Space was renewed for a third season, due to hit screens in 2021, back in March. However, Netflix confirmed that the upcoming series will sadly be the Robinson family’s final frontier.

At first glance you may wonder why I’ve included this period romance in a sci-fi list, but it involves time travel so it qualifies. As a concept, time travel is fraught with paradoxes and dangers, and what can be changed between the past, present and future, and what can’t.

My advice, for this one in particular, is to not get too involved with the nitty gritty details. Just go with it. Based on the series of books by Diana Gabaldon, at the centre of the tale is Claire Randall (Caitriona Balfe), a married combat nurse from 1945 who is mysteriously swept back in time to 1743, where she is “forced” to marry Jamie (Sam Heughan), a chivalrous and romantic young Scottish warrior.

While only three of the five seasons are available on Netflix in South Africa, Season 5 is coming to DStv Now in July 2020.

If Star Trek wasn’t on this list, I suspect there would be riots. Netflix has a whole fleet of different series, from the original three in the 1960s, to Discovery, The Next Generation, Voyager, and Deep Space Nine.

Star Trek (don’t, whatever you do, mix it up with Star Wars) was created by Gene Rodenberry and followed the voyages of the starship USS Enterprise on its five-year mission, the purpose of which was “to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilisations, to boldly go where no man has gone before”. The cast included William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy. Reviews are superfluous; if you’re a fan, you’re a fan. Live long and prosper.

Then over on Amazon you’ll find one of the newest instalments of the expanded franchise, which features the character Jean-Luc Picard, played by the delightful Patrick Stewart, reprising his much-loved role.

Picard begins 20 years after Star Trek: Nemesis (2002), with Picard now retired but still deeply affected by the death of Data (Brent Spiner), which happened in that film. The destruction of the planet Romulus, from the film Star Trek (2009), is another past trauma that’s still making Picard a tad emotional.

In Hawkins, Indiana, in the early 1980s, the Hawkins National Laboratory claims to perform scientific research for the United States Department of Energy, but in reality, the facility is experimenting with the paranormal and supernatural using human test subjects. This is how a portal to an alternate dimension, “the Upside Down”, gets inadvertently opened, and, before long, the influence of the Upside Down starts affecting everyone who lives in Hawkins.

Season 1 opens in November 1983, Season 2 starts a year later, in October 1984, and Season 3 picks up in the days leading up to the Fourth of July celebration in 1985.

There are some seriously big questions left hanging following Season 3’s explosive 77-minute finale, The Battle of Starcourt, says Digital Spy. “But despair not, friends, the Netflix sci-fi horror will be back for season four (even if its eagerly awaited return date is a bit upside down right now), which means all of those loose ends you’ve been losing sleep over will eventually be ironed out. Or so we hope, anyway.”

Tales from the Loop follows the interconnected lives of the residents in the fictional town of Mercer, Ohio, home to an underground facility known as the Loop, where researchers are attempting to “make the impossible possible”.

According to Indiewire, “Themes, genre, and a distinct, unifying feeling bond these stories together more than any overarching story, so it’s only fitting that a series defying easy descriptions – not quite an anthology series, not entirely episodic, not exactly serialised, and certainly not a typical season of TV – would have a peculiar origin of its own, starting with a book. Not a novel or a memoir, but a book of paintings made by Swedish artist Simon Stålenhag.”

This is the best-performing new HBO drama since Westworld and is being called “one of the best Stephen King adaptations in years.”

All 10 gripping episodes are now available to binge-watch. Police detective Ralph Anderson (Golden Globe nominee Ben Mendelsohn from Bloodline and Ready Player One) is still grieving the death of his own son when the mutilated body of 11-year-old Frankie Peterson is found in the Georgia woods.

When his prime suspect, Terry Maitland (Emmy and Golden Globe winner Jason Bateman from Ozark, who also directs the first two episodes), is seemingly in two places at once during the murder, Ralph brings in unorthodox private investigator Holly Gibney (the brilliant Cynthia Erivo, nominated for two Oscars and two Golden Globes this year for Harriet) to help explain the unexplainable, in episode three.

For me, she made the show, and guided not only Ralph towards accepting the inexplicable, but the viewer as well.

Will & Grace’s Eric McCormack stars as Grant MacLaren, the team leader of thousands of special operatives tasked with preventing the collapse of society. These “travelers” have their consciousnesses sent back in time and transferred into the bodies of people who, without their intervention, would be mere seconds from death. The idea is that saving these people will minimise the impact their death would have on the time line.

This series is described as “part science fiction, part human drama, part Outer Limits.”

“When it chooses to go there, Travelers is very good at delivering on the darker side of fiction,” says Den Of Geek.

More body/mind swapping here, in 2033, when humans are able to “upload” themselves into a virtual afterlife of their choosing. When 27-year-old computer programmer Nathan (Robbie Amell) dies, he is uploaded to the prestigious Lake View afterlife, which is great – until he finds out that he’s being completely controlled by his possessive and still very-much-alive girlfriend, Ingrid (Allegra Edwards).

As Nathan adjusts to digital heaven, he gets to know the lovely Nora (Andy Allo), his living customer service rep, or “Angel”. Nora is grappling with the pressures of her job while trying to convince her dying father to allow himself to be uploaded. And then there are her growing feelings for Nathan, and her suspicions that Nathan was murdered. This one is billed as a comedy, in case you were wondering.

HBO’s smash hit series is based on Michael Crichton’s 1973 film of the same name with all the benefits of modern CGI and FX to create a fabulous world in which there is a theme park populated by robots. Humans pay top dollar to visit and play out their fantasies which are primarily sex and murder with no consequences.

By Season 3, the story has moved into the “real world” and has left more than a few people hopelessly confused as robot “brains” are swopped between bodies, and most of the time no one knows who is a robot and who is a human, who is good and who is bad, and no one stands still long enough for us to figure it out.

“Westworld was amazingly involving and evocative from the moment it began,” says IGN.