8 Sci-Fi Franchises Better Than ‘Star Trek’

Star Trek has had an extraordinary run. The franchise turns 60 in 2026, and it still has new episodes arriving, with Star Trek: Starfleet Academy having debuted earlier this year and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds currently airing Season 4. There are also 13 theatrical movies, multiple animated series, and decades of novels, games, comics, and other expanded material behind it. That kind of longevity makes Star Trek difficult to compete with, and I understand why people consider it the gold standard.

But bigger doesn’t always mean better. When I look beyond Star Trek, I can think of a bunch of sci-fi franchises that have delivered stronger movies, tighter storytelling, more memorable characters, or a more consistently impressive visual aesthetic. Some have lasted decades; others have made just as much impact with fewer installments. So, no, I’m not pretending Star Trek isn’t important. It absolutely is. But if I were to judge these franchises on the quality of what they’ve actually produced, I could put the following eight above Star Trek.

‘The Terminator’ (1984 – Present)

The Terminator is a fascinating case because it doesn’t need much explaining. James Cameron made two of the best sci-fi action movies ever produced with The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and the time-travel mechanics in those movies still hold up better than most blockbusters with triple the budget. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, and Robert Patrick are unforgettable, and Cameron’s vision of a future shaped by AI feels more real than ever now.

The franchise stumbled hard after T2, and I’m not going to pretend that Terminator Genisys or Terminator: Dark Fate did the mythology any favors. But even with those weaker installments, I think the best Terminator movies are still ahead of Star Trek’s uneven film output. Terminator: Zero also proved in 2024 that the concept has room to evolve. The one-season Netflix anime series is a must-watch for fans of Star Trek.

‘Mad Max’ (1979 – Present)

Mad Max isn’t strictly a sci-fi franchise in the spaceship sense, but its post-apocalyptic Australia runs on the same speculative fuel as any first-contact story. Only this one is pointed at societal collapse instead of an alien encounter. George Miller’s world-building comes alive through dialect, vehicle design, and desert iconography, and it does more heavy lifting than the story ever could. So Fury Road remains a technically astonishing movie even a decade after its release.

Anya Taylor-Joy’s turn as Furiosa gave the franchise a proper origin story that filled in the gaps in the emotional side of Fury Road. While the movie is obviously the crown jewel, I wouldn’t dismiss the rest of the franchise. The Road Warrior established the wasteland aesthetic. Beyond Thunderdome went bigger and weirder. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga also followed in 2024, with Miller having more to say about this world.

‘Planet of the Apes’ (1968 – Present)

20th Century Studios

I think Planet of the Apes deserves more credit for how well it has survived multiple eras of filmmaking. The original 1968 movie became a franchise, the 1970s sequels expanded the mythology, Tim Burton tried his own reboot in 2001, and then Rupert Wyatt and Matt Reeves turned it into a successful modern blockbuster trilogy. Now Wes Ball’s new trilogy has continued that story with Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024). It’s an impressive track record.

What puts Planet of the Apes above Star Trek, for me, is how consistently it uses science fiction to talk about human problems. The franchise has explored prejudice, war, authoritarianism, environmental collapse, religion, and the consequences of technological progress without ever losing sight of the characters. The Caesar trilogy, with Andy Serkis’ career-defining motion-capture performance, especially raised the bar.

‘Blade Runner’ (1982 – Present)

Ridley Scott’s original 1982 movie bombed on release, and now it sits comfortably among the most influential sci-fi movies ever made. Almost every cyberpunk movie made since has borrowed from its neon-soaked, rain-drenched aesthetic of Los Angeles. Denis Villeneuve’s 2017 sequel, Blade Runner 2049, managed to do something rare for a 35-year gap between movies by making the questions about memory and identity hit harder.

Roger Deakins finally won his first Academy Award for his cinematography, while Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford gave the movie its emotional center. However, the real achievement came from trusting the audience with a slow, atmospheric sci-fi story. Amazon’s upcoming Blade Runner 2099 series, with Michelle Yeoh leading a cast that includes Hunter Schafer, is set 50 years after the events of 2049 and is building a lot of anticipation from fans.

‘Alien’ (1979 – Present)

20th Century Fox

Ridley Scott turned a haunted house premise into a sci-fi powerhouse with Alien, and James Cameron turned it into a war movie with Aliens. Both approaches are among the best examples of genre filmmaking, proving a franchise doesn’t need to stay in one lane to remain great. Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley set a template for the reluctant, resourceful action heroine that still gets imitated, and let’s not forget H.R. Giger’s effective monster design of the Xenomorph.

There’s a little inconsistency with later movies, which makes it harder for me to rank Alien higher than Dune or Star Wars, but its highs are extraordinary. Alien and Aliens remain genre-defining movies, and 2024’s Alien: Romulus brought the series back to its horror roots. FX’s Alien: Earth, created by Noah Hawley, extended the franchise to live-action television for the first time last year and expanded its monster ecosystem well beyond the Xenomorph. A second season is now confirmed as well.

‘Dune’ (1984 – Present)

Star Trek gives you an enormous universe to explore, but Dune gives you something more valuable: a world that feels like it existed long before you caught a peep. Frank Herbert’s novels built an entire political, religious, ecological, and cultural system around Arrakis, and Denis Villeneuve’s movies finally found a way to translate that scale to the screen without flattening the material.

Timothée Chalamet’s transformation from reluctant heir to messianic figure over the course of two movies so far is pretty convincing, too. Dune: Part Three, which adapts Herbert’s Dune Messiah, is set for release in December 2026, and it promises to complete his arc even further. It follows Paul as he reckons with the empire he’s created instead of celebrating it. Additionally, Dune: Prophecy, HBO’s Bene Gesserit prequel series, has a second season already in production.

‘The Matrix’ (1999 – Present)

Murray Close / © Warner Bros. / Courtesy Everett Collection

I have a much easier time calling The Matrix a masterpiece than I do calling the franchise consistently great. That’s an important distinction, because the original 1999 movie reshaped action cinema for good, and it did so while smuggling in a dense philosophical argument about simulated reality and free will. The Wachowskis designed a world where the action sequences are an extension of the movie’s ideas, and few sci-fi franchises have matched that fusion since.

And honestly, the sequels get criticized more than they deserve. The Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions let us in on the lore. It was stranger and more ambitious than the first movie, and even Resurrections found a legitimately interesting way to interrogate its own legacy instead of just repeating the formula. Now the story is still moving. Warner Bros. has confirmed a fifth Matrix movie, with Drew Goddard writing and directing, although it does not have a release date yet.

‘Star Wars’ (1977 – Present)

Star Wars is probably the most obvious franchise on this list to pit against Star Trek. Both have spent decades building massive universes, but Star Wars has always felt more mythological and immediately cinematic to me. You don’t need a detailed understanding of its politics to understand why the Jedi, Sith, lightsabers, bounty hunters, smugglers, droids, and endless planets work. The basic ideas are incredibly accessible, and then the franchise gives you plenty of room to go deeper.

The biggest advantage Star Wars has over Star Trek is the sheer variety of stories it can support. Andor became a grounded political thriller; The Mandalorian became a western; and The Clone Wars became a surprisingly mature war drama. Rogue One was a grim military drama, and Ahsoka is all about fantasy. Even after 50 years, Lucasfilm keeps finding new corners of the galaxy to explore. The official franchise timeline now spans thousands of years, from the Dawn of the Jedi era through the post-Rise of Skywalker period. It’s no easy feat, and Star Wars has more in the pipeline too, including Ahsoka Season 2 and a Dave Filoni-directed movie.

Which sci-fi franchise would you rank above Star Trek? Let us know in the comments.

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William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Deforest Kelley, Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, Avery Brooks, Kate Mulgrew, Scott Bakula, Sonequa Martin-Green, Anson Mount, Jeri Ryan, Holly Hunter

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