20 best shows like Approaching the Unknown (2016)

Explore an aspirational world where NASA and the space program remained a priority and a focal point of our hopes and dreams as told through the lives of NASA astronauts, engineers, and their families.

In 1963, the U.S. government launched a covert space mission sending hundreds of men, women and children on a century-long voyage aboard the starship Ascension to populate a new world. Nearly 50 years into the journey, as they approach the point of no return, a mysterious murder of a young woman causes the ship’s population to question the true nature of their mission.

After Earth is ravaged by a great religious war, an atheistic android architect sends two of his creations, Mother and Father, to start a peaceful, godless colony on the planet Kepler-22b. Their treacherous task is jeopardized by the arrival of the Mithraic, a deeply devout religious order of surviving humans.

A thriller set two hundred years in the future following the case of a missing young woman who brings a hardened detective and a rogue ship's captain together in a race across the solar system to expose the greatest conspiracy in human history.

An astronaut returns home from a year long solo mission in space. She tries to reconnect with her husband and son in their everyday life. Her experiences in space and home lead to events that ultimately will change the course of human history.

400 years after the extinction of the human race, a small group of humans are revived by an alien civilization. The colony of revived humans encounter struggles with the aliens who extinguished humankind centuries before, while trying to understand and get along with the mysterious aliens who revived them.

In the year 2093, a team of scientists aboard the Nightflyer, the most advanced ship ever built, embarks on a journey to find other life forms. Their mission takes them to the edge of the solar system, and to the edge of insanity, as they realize true horror isn't waiting for them in outer space—it's already on their ship.

After crash-landing on an alien planet, the Robinson family fights against all odds to survive and escape. But they're surrounded by hidden dangers.

Terra Nova follows an ordinary family on an incredible journey back in time to prehistoric Earth as a small part of a daring experiment to save the human race. In the year 2149, the world is dying. The planet is overdeveloped and overcrowded, with the majority of plant and animal life extinct. The future of mankind is in jeopardy, and its only hope for survival is in the distant past.

After a tragic ending to her short-lived super hero stint, Jessica Jones is rebuilding her personal life and career as a detective who gets pulled into cases involving people with extraordinary abilities in New York City.

Follows the crew of the not-so-functional exploratory ship in the Earth's interstellar fleet, 400 years in the future.

With the Ancients' city of Atlantis discovered in the Pegasus Galaxy by Stargate Command, Dr. Elizabeth Weir and Major Sheppard lead a scientific expedition to the ancient abandoned city. Once there, the team not only find themselves unable to contact Earth, but their explorations unexpectedly reawaken the Ancients' deadly enemies, The Wraith, who hunger for this new prey. Now with the help of newfound local allies like Teyla Emmagan, the Atlantis Team sets about to uncover their new home's secrets even as their war of survival against the Wraith begins.

The peaceful alien invasion of Earth by the mysterious “Overlords,” whose arrival begins decades of apparent utopia under indirect alien rule, at the cost of human identity and culture.

The adventures of a present-day, multinational exploration team traveling on the Ancient spaceship Destiny many billions of light years distant from the Milky Way Galaxy. They evacuated there and are now trying to figure out a way to return to Earth, while simultaneously trying to explore and to survive in their unknown area of the universe.

Defiance is an American science fiction television show that takes place in the future on a radically transformed Earth containing new species arriving from space. In the show, Joshua Nolan works as the lawman for the town of Defiance, a community where humans and intelligent extraterrestrial species coexist. The show follows Nolan, his adopted alien daughter Irisa, and the town's new mayor Amanda Rosewater.

Set in a single room of an average American motel, each episode tells a different story of the assorted characters who pass through it.

Siberia is an American mockumentary series about a reality television show where 16 contestants must survive in the Siberian territory of Tunguska. The show was filmed in Birds Hill Provincial Park just north of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. It premiered on NBC on July 1, 2013. The first season was met with generally favorable reviews from critics and viewers, with average viewership per episode coming in around 2.03 million viewers. Metacritic scored the show with a 63 out of 100. The series concluded its first season on September 16, 2013.

Falling Skies opens in the chaotic aftermath of an alien attack that has left most of the world completely incapacitated. In the six months since the initial invasion, the few survivors have banded together outside major cities to begin the difficult task of fighting back. Each day is a test of survival as citizen soldiers work to protect the people in their care while also engaging in an insurgency campaign against the occupying alien force.

An English teacher travels back in time to prevent the Kennedy assassination, but discovers he is attached to the life he has made in a bygone era.

David Haller, AKA Legion, is a troubled young man who may be more than human. Diagnosed as schizophrenic, David has been in and out of psychiatric hospitals for years. But after a strange encounter with a fellow patient, he’s confronted with the possibility that the voices he hears and the visions he sees might be real.

The provocative story of Cole, a time traveler from a decimated future in a high-stakes race against the clock. Utilizing a dangerous and untested method of time travel, he journeys from 2043 to the present day on a mission to locate and eradicate the source of a deadly plague that will all but annihilate the human race.

Young computer engineer Lily Chan investigates the secretive development division of her employer, a cutting-edge tech company based in San Francisco, which she believes is behind the murder of her boyfriend.

The Martian Chronicles deals with the exploration of Mars and the inhabitants there.

After a fortuitous drug bender saves his life, addict Jake ventures out into the quiet streets… unaware that most of the world already died in their beds. Now, battling sleepless fatigue and encroaching delirium, Jake teams with a scrappy teenager, overnight doctor and red-eye pilot to search for answers… and just maybe find a way to sleep again.

Set in a dystopian future, a woman is forced to live as a concubine under a fundamentalist theocratic dictatorship. A TV adaptation of Margaret Atwood's novel.

When day becomes night, a strict curfew forces ordinary people to go pedal to the metal in a deadly race for freedom. During this contest, alliances and friendships are both made and lost.

After a massive alien artifact lands on Earth, Niko Breckinridge leads an interstellar mission to track down its source and make first contact.

Three years after the zombie virus has gutted the country, a team of everyday heroes must transport the only known survivor of the plague from New York to California, where the last functioning viral lab waits for his blood.

A shipping magnate hires four experts from various fields to investigate what happened to his ships that went missing in the Bermuda Triangle. The team discovers a threat that might unravel time itself and cause the world to end.

In a world mostly wiped out by the plague and embroiled in an elemental struggle between good and evil, the fate of mankind rests on the frail shoulders of the 108-year-old Mother Abagail and a handful of survivors. Their worst nightmares are embodied in a man with a lethal smile and unspeakable powers: Randall Flagg, the Dark Man.

The supernatural phenomenon begins again with a fresh crop of inspiring heroes who take on the ultimate struggle between those with extraordinary abilities and those with nefarious motives to hunt and harness their powers. Epic adventures await these newly empowered allies as they cross paths with some of the original characters, unlocking the mysterious fate of the universe and their place within it.

Follow the first human mission to Mars, exploring the challenges of taking the first steps toward interplanetary colonization. The story focuses not only on the astronauts, but also on their families and loved ones, as well as the ground team on Earth.

Tales of science fiction, fantasy and the occult, exploring humanity's hopes, despairs, prides and prejudices in metaphoric ways. Next stop ahead The Twilight Zone.

Given superstrength and durability by a sabotaged experiment, a wrongly accused man escapes prison to become a superhero for hire.

A dark odyssey about the dawn of artificial consciousness and the evolution of sin. Set at the intersection of the near future and the reimagined past, it explores a world in which every human appetite, no matter how noble or depraved, can be indulged.

Stripped of everything, the survivors of a horrific plane crash must work together to stay alive. But the island holds many secrets.

Helix is an intense thriller about a team of scientists from the Centers for Disease Control who travel to a high-tech research facility in the Arctic to investigate a possible disease outbreak, only to find themselves pulled into a terrifying life-and-death struggle that holds the key to mankind's salvation...or total annihilation.

In a future where the elite inhabit an island paradise far from the crowded slums, you get one chance to join the 3% saved from squalor.

The space family Robinson is sent on a five-year mission to find a new planet to colonise. The voyage is sabotaged time and again by an inept stowaway, Dr. Zachary Smith. The family's spaceship, Jupiter II, also carries a friendly robot who endures an endless stream of abuse from Dr. Smith, but is a trusted companion of young Will Robinson

A U.S. satellite crash-lands near a small town in Utah, unleashing a deadly plague that kills virtually everyone except two survivors, who may provide clues to immunizing the population. As the military attempts to quarantine the area, a team of highly specialized scientists is assembled to find a cure and stop the spread of the alien pathogen, code-named Andromeda.

Andromeda is a Canadian/American science fiction television series, based on unused material by the late Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, developed by Robert Hewitt Wolfe, and produced by Roddenberry's widow, Majel Barrett. It starred Kevin Sorbo as High Guard Captain Dylan Hunt. The series premiered on October 2, 2000 and ended on May 13, 2005. Andromeda was filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and produced by Tribune Entertainment and Fireworks Entertainment. It was distributed by Global TV in Canada and syndicated in the United States on WGN and other channels. It was picked up by the Sci-Fi Channel in the U.S. halfway through season four. Andromeda is one of two TV series based upon concepts Roddenberry had created as early as the 1960s and 1970s. The name Dylan Hunt had also been used for the hero of two TV movie pilots Roddenberry had produced in the mid-1970s, Genesis II and Planet Earth, which had a similar premise. The other series posthumously created from Roddenberry's notes is Earth: Final Conflict.

The story of several young people from around the world who represent the next stage in human evolution, possessing special powers, including the ability to teleport and communicate with each other telepathically. Together they work to defeat the forces of evil.

Revolution focuses on the struggle to survive 15 years after a global blackout.

Laura Price, a local news producer in San Francisco, is helping the police to hunt down a serial killer. After the killer strikes close to home, a twist of fate allows a “Groundhog Day”-type reset, and Laura relives the week prior to the string of murders. Can she change fate and stop the killer?

The Outer Limits is an anthology series of distinct story episodes, sometimes with a plot twist at the end. Unlike the original incarnation of the series, which was a pure anthology with each episode completely unrelated to the others, the revival series maintained an anthology format, but occasionally featured recurring story elements that were often tied together during season-finale clip shows.

Thirty-something Hazel Green tries to escape a suffocating marriage — until she realizes her tech billionaire husband has implanted a revolutionary tracking device, the Made for Love, in her brain.

In the dark, early days of a zombie apocalypse, complete strangers band together to find the strength they need to survive and get back to loved ones.

The story of the United States' space program, from its beginnings in 1961 to the final moon mission in 1972.

Each episode transports the audience to worlds of wonder through the lens of today’s most imaginative filmmakers, directors and writers. A reimagining of the original anthology series by Steven Spielberg.

Agent Phil Coulson of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division) puts together a team of agents to investigate the new, the strange and the unknown around the globe, protecting the ordinary from the extraordinary.