In Culture
Stephen Hawking's Universe (2010): the Discovery Series
A guide to Stephen Hawking's landmark 2010 Discovery series, Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking, narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch. Three feature-length episodes on aliens, time travel and the story of everything.
Last reviewed 28 May 2026 · How we research
In 2010 the Discovery Channel released Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking, an ambitious three-part documentary series written by Hawking and narrated, on television, by Benedict Cumberbatch and Hawking's own synthesised voice. In the UK it was retitled Stephen Hawking's Universe. Today it is widely regarded as the most visually striking of Hawking's television projects: a "Planet Earth of the heavens," in the description quoted by the Hawking Estate, made for a mass audience rather than a specialist one.
What's in it
The series runs across three feature-length episodes, each exploring one of the big questions Hawking spent his career circling. Episode one, Aliens, considers whether intelligent life elsewhere in the universe is plausible, and what it might look like. Episode two, Time Travel, walks through what relativity actually permits, from time-dilated journeys near the speed of light to the question of whether time travel into the past is possible at all; for the deeper version of that question see Hawking on time travel and the chronology protection conjecture. The final episode, The Story of Everything, condenses fourteen billion years of cosmic history into a single feature-length film, taking in the Big Bang, the formation of galaxies and stars, and the eventual fate of the universe.
What makes it different
The series was made at a time when Hawking could no longer record his own narration in long stretches. The solution, having his text read by an actor while his synthesised voice delivers key lines, gives the films an unusual dual-voice quality that has aged surprisingly well. The other distinguishing feature is its budget: the show was made with Discovery Channel money and looks it, with extensive computer-generated imagery rather than the talking-head studio format of earlier science television.
Why it matters
For viewers who want Hawking's cosmology in his own words but as moving images, the Discovery series is probably the most accessible point of entry. It does what the books also try to do, but with the additional resource of full-budget visualisation. The films are particularly good as classroom resources: each episode stands alone, and the questions are genuine ones that students will already be wondering about.
Where it sits in his work
The Discovery series belongs to a late-career stretch in which Hawking spent considerable effort on bringing his ideas to general audiences. The same period produced The Grand Design (2010, with Leonard Mlodinow) and the television series Stephen Hawking's Grand Design and Brave New World with Stephen Hawking. For a guide to the wider body of his screen work, see the media library and the documentaries page.