Alternate Selves, Sentient Robots and Phone-Call Mysteries: 7 Apple TV Sci-Fi Shows Ranked Across Seasons
Dark Matter’s alternate realities
Dark Matter stars Joel Edgerton as Jason Dessen, a physicist and college professor taken to another reality by an alternate version of himself, Jason2. Jason2 threatens to enter Jason’s life and take his place with Jason’s family if Jason cannot return home.
Jennifer Connelly, Alice Braga and Jimmi Simpson are also in the cast. Based on Blake Crouch’s novel, the series explores choices, fate and the paths people do not take. It has two seasons, with the second scheduled to wrap up at the end of October 2026; a third season has not been officially announced, though the story was originally planned as a three-season arc.
Murderbot hides its awareness
Alexander Skarsgård plays Murderbot, a private security construct that has hacked its governor module and become sentient. It conceals this from others, fearing it will be destroyed if discovered, while working with an eccentric team whose members start to suspect something is wrong.
The show combines science-fiction themes about artificial intelligence and autonomous thought with comedy about human behavior. Murderbot would rather watch its favorite science-fiction series than deal with people. Noma Dumezweni plays team leader Ayda Mensah, and David Dastmalchian plays Gurathin, a technology expert who is a construct-human hybrid.
Calls turns sound into suspense
Calls is a mystery-thriller miniseries adapted from a French series. Instead of conventional scenes, it uses geometric shapes, moving lines and on-screen text while people talk by phone. Each episode follows a call between two or more people describing strange events.
The stories seem separate at first, then connect as the series progresses. Its voice cast includes Aubrey Plaza, Clancy Brown, Pedro Pascal, Nick Jonas and Rosario Dawson. Among the unsettling situations are a woman describing an inhuman presence in her home and another receiving a call from herself while beside what appears to be her dead body.
Key points
- Dark Matter follows a physicist confronted by an alternate version of himself.
- Murderbot pairs a sentient security construct with comedy about human nature.
- Calls builds a mystery through phone conversations and animated shapes.