STORY: Syfy's Plans More Space Operas, Less 'Sharknado'

Syfy was running as far as it could from sci-fi. And so viewers found their nerd jollies elsewhere. The Walking Dead turned into the biggest TV series on cable, with ratings that would dwarf anything not found on broadcast. The CW quietly turned into the genre network, stocking its schedule full of series like The Vampire Diaries, Arrow, The Originals, The 100, Beauty and the Beast and Star-Crossed. J.J. Abrams was littering broadcast with shows like Revolution and the just-canceled Almost Human.

But under new exec vp original programming Bill McGoldrick, Syfy is finally staking a claim to the sci-fi throne that would’ve been the network's -- if it hadn’t decided it didn’t want it. Look at Syfy's moves over the past six months -- starting with announcements that it was adapting Frank Miller’s Ronin, Jonathan Hickman’s Pax Romana and Robert Kirkman’s Clone, along with The Magicians, 12 Monkeys, The Expanse, Dominion, Z Nation, Letter 44, Ascension, Killjoys and Olympus.

Interstellar bounty hunters, far-flung space opera, fallen angels, dimension-hopping samurai, time-traveling Roman legionnaires.… Of course, all of these series won’t make it on the air. (And Syfy still has some dodgy reality shows and wrestling.)

But if even half of them do, this is the Syfy we always wanted and never got.