10 Morally Grey Sci-Fi Shows to Watch After 'Andor'

I might just be speaking for myself here, but Andor, the just-ended series from Disney+, revived a bit of the passion for Star Wars that had been dulled by a run of competent and entertaining movies and miniseries. SW had come to feel like product, which is, of course, what it is, without much else interesting to say. The show feels a little closer to essential by focusing on characters with genuinely complex and surprising motives and digging into the earliest days of the central rebellion.

There are themes of individualism and community in Andor, as well as the dangers of insurrection and overreach. The shows are mostly stories of outer-space rebels and revolutionaries, but with one exception, they're all complete stories with beginnings, middles, and ends.

The Expanse is a novel that imagines a well-populated solar system into which we have carried all of the problems we've always had. Mars colonists have developed technological and military superiority due to having to survive in a challenging environment. Conflict is almost inevitable due to greed, fear, and shortsightedness, but the series isn't as cynical as it first appears. The Expanse is more of a living-in style of science fiction.

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In the same way that The Expanse gives hints of Star Trek-style idealism to a grittier, Andor-esque world, Galactica does the same. The intelligent machines that rebel against their human masters are inspired by their religious beliefs. While the show dives into some questions with surprising depth, we're never allowed to forget that we're seeing humankind more than decimated, and surviving on a few of sometimes rickety ships. While we mostly follow the human characters, the series never takes a hard stand against either side.

There's a place to stream Peacock.

As bounty officially sanctioned Killjoys, the trio at the show's heart, the show develops surprising depth over the course of its five seasons. As they develop ties of friendship and family in an exploited community, they come to understand the high cost of allowing wealth and greed to go unaddressed, and the ways in which neutrality always benefits oppressing. The show's creators make good use of a clearly limited budget, and offer up some impressive queer representation.

There is a place to stream Fubo.

Space: 1999 has the fallen-kingdom feel that Star Wars does. The moon is going to be used as a dump for nuclear waste. A chain reaction leads to an explosion that propels Luna into space, along with the crew and visitors of Moonrise Alpha, the control center and monitoring station. The dread that comes with the knowledge that there is no way to ever return home is faced with the practical problems of surviving. Conflicts arise over differing views of how to form a new community and who should lead it. The contemplative first season represents some of the most thoughtful TV of the genre despite the rather wacky premise.

There are a number of places to stream: Peacock, The Roku Channel, Tubi, Shout Factory TV, Fubo, Crackle and Redbox.

Farscape is still a story about rebels fighting an oppressive empire even though it has a different look than Andor. Ben's character is thrown through a wormhole into a distant corner of the universe. He ends up in between a prison ship that has been hijacked by its prisoners and Peacekeepers. Resistance against the oppressive government becomes the focus of the mis-matched crew, including political dissidents and more conventional criminals, as well as one Peacekeeper. The Jim Henson Company and its Creature Shop gave the show a very distinctive look and feel, sometimes playing like a lost, very dark, episode of The Muppet Show, which is obviously a compliment.

Tubi, The Roku Channel, and Shout Factory TV are where to watch.

After being captured and convicted by the Terran Federation, political dissident RojBlake gets a second chance. When his prison transport responds to a distress call, he and his fellow convicts are able to seize the advanced spaceship they encounter. The crew of the renamed ship "Liberator" were told that the only peace they would have was if the Federation was brought down. Several significant changes in status quo over its four seasons gave it a sense of consequence and unpredictability, and it came to an unexpected and darkly memorable conclusion.

Britbox is where to watch.

Even if its budget couldn't always keep up, the dense space opera was still mature and ambitious. The title space station and port of call is a diplomatic outpost run by the Earth Alliance helping to maintain a fragile peace between various spacefaring alien species. The residents of the once officially sanctioned station find themselves independent after the Earth government tries to turn the war into an excuse to crack down on freedom of speech and individual rights.

There's a place to watch: HBO Max.

Lighter in tone, mostly, than the typical dystopian science fiction, the series follows a crew of mercenaries lead by Mal Reynolds and ZOE ROWLEY, two disaffected former soldiers who fought on the losing side of a war for independence against the thoroughly conformist central. While engaging in activities that aren't always strictly legal, the crew tries to stay under the radar. The short-lived series didn't get around to making much of that core conflict, but the sequel/wrap-up film made clear the true horrors of the governing regime.

There is a place to stream on hguh.

The film Snowpiercer is a remake of the Bong Joon-ho film that shows the remnants of humanity living together on a locomotive that circles the world. The train is not a utopia, with rich at the front and poor at the back, with class distinctions thrown into relief. The series came to tell a story that the movie couldn't because of the aftermath of revolution. It becomes clear that winning a war and governing are different things after rooting for the oppressors to win.

Where to watch on tvN.

The Prisoner created one of television's most stark realized dystopias around a candy colored, mod, pop-art-inspired village that looks like a pretty great retirement community to many. Patrick McGoohan is the creator and director of Number Six, who resigned from his government job over a matter of conscience. He has been rendered unconscious and taken to the remote and all-but-inescapable "Village" full of others with numbers and no names and all of the modern comforts and conveniences that anyone could want. Number Six can't appreciate the luxurious surroundings of what he can only see as a gilded cage. The series makes as good an argument against the soul-crushing impacts of consumer culture and conformity as anything that has ever been on TV.

Tubi, Fubo, Redbox, Crackle, and Shout Factory TV are all available to stream.

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