16 Raunchiest Most Extreme Sci-Fi TV Shows Of All Time

By Jonathan Klotz
| Updated 3 seconds ago

Science fiction may have a reputation for being cold and analytical, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Some of the best sci-fi TV of all time happened on shows that were raunchy, over the top, and downright scandalous.  To prove it, we’ve put together a list of sci-fi TV shows ranked, not by how good they are, but by how spicey they got. 

Consider yourself warned because by the time we get to the top entries on this list, things are going to get steamy. These are the sexiest sci-fi TV shows of all time. 

16. Dollhouse 

Before streaming turned every sci-fi show into gray sludge, there was Dollhouse, a series built around one of the wildest concepts network television ever approved. 

Created by Joss Whedon and starring Eliza Dushku, the 2009 Fox series followed human “Actives” who could have their personalities wiped and replaced on demand, turning them into perfect custom-made companions, spies, assassins, or lovers depending on what rich clients wanted that week. 

The show dressed its existential horror in glossy lighting, expensive clothes, and an almost constant undercurrent of sexual tension. 

Dushku spends most of the series playing different fantasy archetypes from episode to episode, which gave Dollhouse a weird energy somewhere between hard sci-fi and late-night cable thriller. Few sci-fi shows have ever been this slick, strange, or openly seductive.

15. Firefly

Chances are you don’t remember, but the early marketing for Firefly made sure to mention that the crew included a prostitute. 

Morena Baccarin’s Inara is actually a companion, and she made sure to explain the difference between the two in “Heart of Gold”, one of two episodes that never aired on Fox. It also happens to be the the episode with the montage of Captain Malcolm Reynolds and the brothel madam having sex set to the Pure Moods soundtrack. Firefly also includes one of the healthiest marriages in sci-fi, between Zoe and Wash, giving hope to nerdy, Hawaiian-shirt wearing guys everywhere, and in a twist, the horniest member of the crew is Kailee, though it has been a while since she’s had anything twixt her nethers. 

When Mad Men debuted and Christina Hendricks blew up, Firefly fans had to explain they’ve known for years she was, and is, one of the hottest women in Hollywood. Both of her appearances as stand out, and while she has plenty of chemistry with Nathan Fillion’s Captain Malcolm Reynolds, let’s be honest, she’s so good, she’d develop chemistry with a ham sandwich. 

For a show with zero nudity, Firefly is one of the sexiest sci-fi shows to ever hit network television. 

14. Battlestar Galactica

It’s hard to look good when humanity is on the brink of extinction. Battlestar Galactica starts with the survivors of the colonies on the run from the cybernetic Cylons, and it never gets much better for them. The show still managed to give sci-fi fans not one, but multiple sex symbols of the 2000s in Katee Sackhoff, Grace Park, Jamie Bamber, and reminded the world that Edward James Olmos has one of the greatest voices in Hollywood. 

Then there was Number Six. Played by Tricia Helfer in the red dress that launched an entire marketing campaign, Six used sex to doom humanity. Her seduction of Baltar set in motion the entire series and even after they destroyed the colonies, she kept toying with him. Over and over and over. Poor Balter. His lobster was too buttery and his steak was too juicy. 

 It takes a lot to overshadow Lucy Lawless, but Tricia Helfer pulled it off, with a performance that inspired both lust (look at her) and revulsion (listen to her). Six was a beautiful Trojan Horse, and the only thing that could possible improve her character would be if, and hear me out, the Cylons actually had a plan. 

13. Farscape

Variety is the spice of life, and when it comes to the cast of Farscape, it seems everyone is a contender for the title of hottest on the show. Ben Browder never looked better as John, Claudia Black as Aeryn Sun launched a thousand fan fictions, Chiana’s there for the furries, Zhaan proves bald is beautiful, Ka D’Argo is for everyone who thought The Beast looked better before the curse was lifted, someone has to like Starke, Jool’s got the red hair, the villainous Scorpius wears a gimp suit in every scene, and you know, even the ship, Moya, has some fans out there. 

Farscape may have been centered on Crichton thanks to the wormhole knowledge locked inside his head, but it’s the colorful cast that made it a success. Unlike more mainstream sci-fi shows, Farscape wasn’t afraid of a little physical affection. Or a lot. Come to think of it, there’s a lot of attractive aliens getting it on. 

Forget your zodiac sign, which Farscape character was your crush? 

12. The 100 

The 100 was The CW’s flagship sci-fi series for seven seasons filled with humanity trying to rebuild after a nuclear apocalypse by sending 100 teens and young adults back down to a broken Earth. Whoever decided this was a great idea never saw Lord of the Flies, or bothered to think what would happen if the group was co-ed. Saving humanity often takes a backseat to love triangles and hookups. 

Since it’s on The CW, there’s a lot of kissing, shirtless guys, and strategically ripped clothing designed not to trip any network censors. It was also a huge hit. For The CW, which measured success in terms of social media and streaming, not the old, antiquated ratings system. The 100 was never going to be a show for the old sci-fi fans raised on Star Trek: The Next Generation and Stargate. And that’s okay. 

The 100 was aimed directly at teens, giving them a sci-fi show of their very own, complete with disappointing later seasons, nonsensical plot twists, one of the worst character deaths in television history, and a contender for the worst series ending since How I Met Your Mother. 

11. Dark Angel

Jessica Alba is known today as a co-founder of The Honest Company, the first big screen Sue Storm, and as Honey from the single greatest dance movie of the 2000’s. But to sci-fi fans, she’ll always be known as Max, the genetically enhanced supersoldier at the center of James Cameron’s series, Dark Angel. In a perfect world, Max would be remembered alongside her contemporaries, Buffy and Xena, but alas, we only had two seasons of Dark Angel before Fox pulled the plug. 

Set in a dystopian….gothic….cyber-punkish Seattle, Dark Angel had a weird mix of tones and vibes. There’s the whole “child soldier” aspect that’s played seriously, and then the cat DNA spliced into Max’s cells acts up in one episode and sends her into heat. She has to do battle against brainwashed child superhumans, and then defeats them by lifting her top as a distraction. 

James Cameron created some of sci-fi’s greatest heroines, including Ellen Ripley, Sarah Conner, and if you give Dark Angel  a chance, you’ll see that Max Guevera had the potential to be right there with the rest of them. 

Not only was Jessica Alba stunning in every frame of Dark Angel, but the show also included a pre-NCIS Michael Weatherly and some guy named Jensen Ackles as Max’s male counterpart. Wonder if he ever went on to do anything. 

10. Weird Science

For nerds of a certain age, their first crush is all the same: Kelly LeBrock from 1985’s Weird Science.

A decade later, and five seasons of Weird Science the series aired on USA, replacing LeBrock with Vanessa Angel. Replacing LeBrock was always going to be difficult, but using Stargate SG-1’s Anise and the future runner-up to the role of Star Trek Voyager’s Seven-Of-Nine was the best choice possible. 

Vanessa Angel’s Lisa is the same wish-granting computer program. No matter how often a wish goes wrong over the show’s five seasons, teen slackers Gary and Wyatt keep using Lisa to try and get ahead without doing any work. It’s a simple premise that managed to stay on the air thanks primarily to Lisa’s outfits. Keep in mind this was 1995 and what was considered hot for a living computer program would end up becoming every episode outfits on The CW’s Riverdale. 

Back then, Vanessa Angel was one of the hottest women on television, and Weird Science was the USA’s network’s second sexiest show. First? Silk Stalkings. If you had to ask, you never watched Monday Night RAW.

9. Altered Carbon

There’s not enough cyberpunk shows out there. Netflix’s Altered Carbon is still one of the best, showing a decadent, depraved city where the rich can constantly be reborn through the act of sleeving, or transferring their consciousness to another body, while the poor get one shot at life. 

Morals and decency have gone out the window, resulting in a dirty, corrupt, neon-tinged city filled with casual nudity. Joel Kinneman, DC’s Rick Flag, is hired to solve a murder, but he has to navigate the seedy criminal underworld to do so. Season 1 of Altered Carbon is one of the best looking sci-fi shows of all time. It’s the live-action cyberpunk neo-noir mystery readers have wanted to experience for decades. 

Then Season 2 happens. Anthony Mackie taking over as the lead was….fine….but the writing, the production, the general cyberpunk feel of it all, took a massive step back as the budget was slashed. If Season 2 was as grim and gritty as Season 1, Altered Carbon would be higher on the list. Season 1 is sexy, Season 2 has Neal McDonough. If you know, you know. 

8. Westworld 

The only limit is your imagination. That’s one of the main selling points of Westworld to its high-end visitors. 

The ability to be dropped into a wild west experience where you can do anything you want leads, naturally, to lots of raunchy activities. Most of it is with robots, but as the guide says to William early on when asked if she’s real, “if you can’t tell, does it matter?” 

The answer of course, is no. It doesn’t matter. William acts as the audience surrogate to Westworld. His initial horror and rejection of the lewd and lascivious park life gives way as his ethically and moral barriers crumble. Is it really any different than the obvious use of holodeck technology? 

Westworld would be higher on the list except, like with Game of Thrones, its front-loaded. Season 1 shows the park in action before everything goes to hell. That means a lot of random skin and a lot of intimacy. By the time Season 3 comes around, the focus is on the changing shape of the world, though with the cast still including Evan Rachel Wood, Luke Hemsworth, and Thandie Newton, the characters are ridiculously good-looking. Westworld – Come for the Hedonism, stay for the Humanism. 

7. Brave New World

Brave New World is science fiction’s lustiest dystopia. In a, ahem, brave new world where everyone is genetically engineered and monogamy is considered to be savage, sex is considered a community event. That means “group parties”. Lots of them. But when that becomes the norm, and having a good old fashioned romance is taboo, it turns the whole notion of love and relationships on its head. 

Intimacy in this dystopia is not for procreation, it’s entire purpose is to feel pleasure. And yet, it lacks real intimacy. The citizens of New London have the time and freedom to indulge in whatever whim suits their fancy, within the strict rules of the caste system of course. It’s a sexy take on a dystopian future, but it’s also one of the oldest. The original novel was published in 1932.

Brave New World aired for a single season on Peacock in 2020 which means you likely missed it. It stars Alden Ehrenreich, making this the closest you’ll get to watching Han Solo get wild. 

6. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners

There could be an entire separate list for sexy sci-fi anime. Freed from the constraints of network television and American attitudes towards animation, anime can get as freaky as you can imagine. 

One of the best of the decade, is Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, set in the same world as the hit video game, Cyberpunk 2077, which includes a genital slider in character creation, so you had to have known anything in this world wouldn’t be afraid to let its freak flag fly. 

The series follows David Martinez, a student sucked into the underground world of Night City, because of what else, a woman. Lucy, the smart, capable netrunner, acts as David’s guide, alongside a gang of edgerunners, cybernetically-enhanced mercenaries on the wrong side of the law. There’s bloody shootouts, violent deaths, and lots of ice baths. That’s the best way for a netrunner to perform a deep dive into the network which means every single episode contains nudity. 

It’s not excessive, but it is consistent, and frankly, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is a better story than the video game. Best of all, Netflix announced a second season. There’s no release date yet, but if it’s half as good as the first season, it’ll be one of Netflix’s best shows of the year. 

5. Gillian Anderson

It’s the show that changed sci-fi, and television, forever. The X-Files brought together long-term storytelling, mysterious conspiracies, and monster-of-the-week episodes in one genre-defining package. It also introduced the world to Agent Dana Scully, and more importantly, Gillian Anderson. Can you believe that at the time, Fox wanted to cast someone with more sex appeal than Gillian Anderson? Is that even possible? Even today at almost 60 year sold, she looks incredible. 

The X-Files is, by itself, not a very sexy series, but Gillian Anderson managed to shatter the mold by taking a smart, intelligent, capable character in Dana Scully and showing Hollywood that yes, this is sexy.  Wearing suits and FBI jackets, Gillian Anderson became the sex symbol of the 90s. She was on magazine covers, college dorm posters, and was one of the most downloaded women on AOL for years.  

It’s impossible to imagine anyone else playing Dana Scully. Gillian Anderson was the perfect star at the perfect time. 

4. Sense8

After redefining science fiction movies with The Matrix, The Waschowskis have made it their mission to produce strange, philosophical stories. Cloud Atlas bent time and space to show how everything is connected, but three years later, they teamed up with Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski and unleashed Sense8 on an unsuspecting Netflix audience. 

The series follows eight humans who can share their thoughts, feelings, skills, and language with each other across time and space. It gets very metaphorical, very fast, and the Waschowskis made sure to include countless shirtless scenes and multiple uh… hedonistic gatherings? to show how connected the eight sensates were becoming, figuratively, by showing it, physically. 

Considering the Wachowskis also made Bound, decked everyone out in leather for The Matrix, and gave us the Zion rave scene in the sequel, we should have known they had this type of story in them. Sense8 is all about the human experience, the ups and downs, the longing for connection, and it doesn’t shy away from including physical intimacy. A lot of it. 15 separate scenes spread out over 2 seasons. And 3 uh… group encounters. 

3. Outlander 

Starz knew what it was doing. The network gave the world Banshee, Spartacus, American Gods, and even one of the most successful shows in history: Outlander. When it debuted in 2014, the time-travel historical fantasy became the most popular show on the planet. And all it had to do was subvert the Hollywood playbook and give in to the female gaze. 

Outlander adapts the series of hit romance novels by Diana Gabaldon, brought to life by Ronald D. Moore, yup, the man who reinvented Battlestar Galactica and redefined modern sci-fi also created Outlander. 

The series kicks off when Claire, a nurse in 1945, goes through a mystical circle to 1743, and falls in love with a Highlander…not THE Highlander…an actual highlander, Jamie Fraser. Throwing out all the rules for time travel from Back to the Future, Claire and Jamie have a family together while also battling the British Empire, taking part in the American Revolution, and altering history in the process. 

They also have a lot of sex. Don’t be fooled, there’s a reason romance books are always the highest-selling. The things that authors describe in those pages will blow your mind. Outlander is still the rare case of a time-traveling  historical romance novel making the leap to a successful series. 

2. True Blood 

The technological breakthrough of artificial human blood allows the vampires of the world of True Blood to come out of the shadows and integrate with human society, with, well, mixed results. 

What can’t be argued is the blockbuster success of the series that helped launch HBO to a new level of success, showed more blood, guts, and skin, than any series before it, and I can’t help but think what goes on in the basement of Fangtasia launched the current explosion of dark romance novels on bookshelves everywhere. 

Fans got to see a LOT of Anna Paquin’s Sookie Stackhouse and the rest of the women on the cast, but it was the Viking Vampire Eric Northman and Werewolf Alcide, played by two guys you may have heard of: Alexander Skarsgard and Joe Maniganello, whose careers caught fire. True Blood had something for everyone.

Even fans of vampires in tactical military hardware blowing up a witch’s coven with a rocket launcher. It took no time at all for True Blood to go full crazy, and you know what, we need more shows unafraid to be sexy and campy. 

1. Lexx

Farscape’s weirder, hornier cousin, Lexx is a one-of-a-kind viewing experience. It’s the sexiest sci-fi show of all time, almost by default. No series has been as blatantly hedonistic as Lexx. 

Defacto captain Stanley orders the Lexx, the most powerful weapon in existence, to fly to a planet with loose women, and he’s willing to sell out existence for a chance to be with one. Zev and later, Xev, is obsessed with hookups and willing to sleep with any man (well, almost any, sorry Stanley) thanks to a botched brainwashing procedure that was never completed. 

The Lexx itself is, well, interesting. Like Farscape’s Moya, it’s a bio-organic ship, unlike the Moya, it’s a lot….squishier. The shower controls require pulling and tugging on nodules that look like….well…..it’s uhhh…phallic. Lexx looks and sounds like a Skinemax parody of itself. 

You can’t go a single episode without at least one character getting libidinous, well, the musical episode at least gets close to being a normal episode of any other sci-fi series. And when it’s the musical episode that’s the most normal, that says something. Lexx is a lusty fever dream of a sci-fi show that we’ll never see again. 

What other show can you say includes a robotic loveslave as a main character and a spaceship that eats Holland?