The best sci-fi TV and movies on Paramount+, from 'Blue Velvet' to 'Beavis' and 'Bumblebee'

As one of the newer streaming services around, Paramount+ has had to play a little catch-up in order to gain subscribers. Fortunately for them, they've got a library of content that dates back to before TV was even a thing, so there's plenty to entice. So much so, that it can be somewhat daunting to try and choose between all the (inter)stellar content on the streamer.

Since such a myriad of choices could easily cause an existential streaming crisis, SYFY WIRE is here to help you winnow it all down. Whether it's new to the service this month or a deep library cut, we've selected some of the streamer's most bingeable genre shows and movies below. Happy streaming!

Star Trek: Picard

It probably just makes sense to start out with what we're most excited about: the return of Star Trek: Picard Season 2 (kicking off a run of 10 episodes through May 5). While we eagerly await Sir Patrick Stewart's MCU fate, we can think of no better way to spend time with the erstwhile Professor. Oh Captain, Our Captain and his new(ish) generation of companions are trapped in the 21st century when that pesky Q breaks apart reality. What a mess that'll make. Of course, no less than the fate of the galaxy is at stake, so stay tuned! And bonus: while you wait for new episodes to drop, Paramount+ is also the hub for every other Star Trek show as well, so whatever your reality, there's plenty of other bold ways to escape it.

Blue Velvet

By 1986, we'd seen David Lynch's Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, and Dune, but perhaps we still didn't quite realize what a weirdo genius the writer/director/musician/artist definitively is. Blue Velvet permanently cemented that reputation, for a number of reasons, but none more so than Dennis Hopper's Frank Booth, who insanely huffed his way into some of the weirdest and most perverse acts ever filmed, the type you'd probably rather not see, if you could only look away.   

Flatliners

There was a brief stint in the '80s there when Kiefer Sutherland was one of the scarier dudes around. After menacing turns in Stand By Me and The Lost Boys, Donald's favorite's son was still far from moving into Jack Bauer hero territory when he starred in 1990's Flatliners, which featured him on the road to respectable, as a promising young med student. Alas, he doesn't quite get there, since he convinces all his schoolmates -- including Julia Roberts and Kevin Bacon -- into doctoring their own deaths for longer and longer increments of precious time. Guess what? No one ends up winning the Nobel Prize for Medicine.

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark

It's almost as though you could just have a streaming channel made up entirely of this movie, and it'd still be worth the price of admission. Okay, we'll throw in Temple of Doom, Last Crusade, and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull to sweeten the deal. That's a lot of quality swashbuckling time spent with one of genre's all-time great heroes (of course, there's not just a solo Harrison Ford hero that makes that list).

Bumblebee

Before this film, a generation or two of Transformers fans probably thought Bumblebee was best suited towards comic relief, not Optimus star status -- perhaps even more so after Michael Bay dropped the cartoon Beetle for an out-of-character Camaro. Fortunately, Travis Knight's way-smaller-than-a-Baysian take on a Transformers flick was just big enough to deliver, thanks in no small part to its plucky slug bug/robot star and his actually helpful human, Charlie (Hailee Steinfeld).

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

There was a time when Hansel & Gretel were just two little German kids caught in the wrong forest by the wrong evil witch, but Tommy Wirkola's 2013 hot take on the Grimm fairy tale gives the brother and sister duo a decidedly more violently steampunk twist. The progressively more creative and entertaining ways in which Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton kill witches is positively bewitching!

Arrival

From Renner starring to Renner supporting the spectacular Amy Adams, who plays cephalopod linguist Louise Banks, who cunningly learns to communicate with some of the most realistically (presumably) portrayed aliens ever in this time-and-space-and-genre-bending Best Picture nominee directed by Denis Villeneuve (whose Dune may just win that prize at this year's Oscars). 

Clue

Back in 1985, we hadn't seen too many movies based on games or toys, so it was super exciting to see something you played voraciously as a kid suddenly come to the big screen. But even watching those characters you knew so well come to life before your eyes wasn't as enticing as the fact that the film had three possible endings, depending on which theater you happened to be attending. All these years later, novelties aside, it's the incredible comic cast that really sets this one apart though, particularly Eileen Brennan as Mrs. Peacock, Madeline Kahn as Mrs. White, Christopher Lloyd as Professor Plum, Michael McKean as Mr. Green, Martin Mull as Colonel Mustard, Lesley Ann Warren as Miss Scarlet, and the inimitable Tim Curry as the G-man of the house, Wadsworth.

Beavis and Butt-Head: The Mike Judge Collection

Nothing puts the 'mount' in Paramount quite like these two fire-loving rockers. And what better way to get ready for Paramount+'s upcoming B&B sci-fi movie than with a selection of the finest episodes of the original cartoon personally selected by creator Mike Judge, a man who knows a thing or two about ... well, everything, having correctly predicted the fate of the world today in his hauntingly prescient 2006 masterpiece, Idiocracy. Fire!

Interstellar

No one proves 'time is a flat circle' better than Matthew McConaughey, whether it be in this mind-f*** of a movie or True Detective. And there's no one better than Christopher Nolan at proving that movies really don't have to make sense in order to be really good. Like Inception before and Tenet after, Interstellar asks way more questions than it answers, and it looks damn good doing so.