In an age of sprawling, IP-fueled space operas and superhero sagas, you’d be forgiven for assuming that science fiction functions best with tons of money behind it. But from Buck Rogers and The Twilight Zone to the early days of Star Trek and Doctor Who, the foundations of TV sci-fi have always been scrappy. Who needs CGI when you’ve got a can of silver spray paint, a wild imagination, and a team eager to bridge the gap between big ideas and modest means?
That tradition continues with Shatter Belt, a four-episode anthology series that was made available for purchase last year and wasproduced on an eensy-weensy budget with nary a studio in sight. But the show doesn’t just make the best of its limited resources; it uses them as a jumping-off point for stories thatfocus on the human side of the sci-fi equation. A sentient refrigerator, a glitch in the matrix, an otherworldly omakase feast: Shatter Belt uses these wild concepts to explore everything from petty professional jealousies to the nature of temporality. The production values are a little threadbare, and not all the performances hit home, but this lack of slickness doesn’t detract from the fact that this show is like nothing else out there.
The series is the oddball offspring of James Ward Byrkit, who built a name for himself as Gore Verbinski’s go-to storyboard artist before making his feature filmmaking debut in 2013 with his microbudget sci-fi indie Coherence. He shot that largely improvised tale (about a dinner party that goes pear-shaped after a comet passes overhead) in his own living room with eight actors and a small crew. The project earned him a screenplay award at Austin Fantastic Fest and a dedicated cult following that includes Patton Oswalt.
That goodwill carried on to Shatter Belt, which debuted at SXSW in 2023. The show got off the ground thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign, a small team of investors, and a cast and crew largely composed of Byrkit’s friends and past collaborators. Oswalt is the only major name you’ll find in the credits, and the rest of the ensemble is composed of lesser-known actors, including a few who starred in Coherence (Emily Baldoni, Maury Sterling, and Hugo Armstrong).
If you had to deliver an elevator pitch, you might describe the series as Black Mirror meets The Twilight Zone meets the trippy, existential sci-fi of Shane Carruth. But really, Shatter Belt is its own animal. Byrkit and his team pack entire worlds into each episode, which run around 30 minutes apiece, and they’re gripping from the word go. Each installment dives in when the story is already underway and pulls out early, trusting viewers to use their imaginations to fill in the blanks.
Take “The Hard Problem Of Carl,” a taut little thriller centered on a mysterious woman (Baldoni) on a mission to delay the rise of sentient AI. Does she work on her own or for a shadowy agency trying to save humanity from the singularity? Can we trust the methods of a woman who bursts into a couple’s house and starts firing bullets at household appliances? And do the people the AI possesses actually need to be rescued, or are they the next evolution of the species? The episode offers no clear answers, endingon a quiet note that leads us to question the very notion of human consciousness.
Not every installment is quite so thoughtful, though. “Immotus” wants to be a clever satire of mob mentality in the age of social media, but it’s heavy-handed to the point of feeling hokey. Still, the MacGuffin is fascinating: an ordinary-looking apple that seems to occupy its own timeless reality, refusing to be interacted with no matter how much a person wants to touch it. This leads to a debate about the existence of free will among a group of millennials struggling to keep their tech startup afloat.
The satire sings, however, in “Pearls,” whichunfolds over the course of a pricey dinner at an exclusive restaurant whose dishes are, um, unique. The guests? A pair of company heads (played by Elimu Nelson and Mad Men’s Abigail Spencer) and two employees (portrayed by Catherine Lidstone and Richard Follin) gunning for a promotion. Without spoiling the piece, suffice to say that with each dish they ingest, the less professional things get. “Pearls” is a nasty takedown of capitalism and its discontents, bolstered by Spencer’s pointed performance—not to mention prop food that walks a fine line between molecular gastronomy and body horror.
It’s only natural that Byrkit saved the series’ best episode, “The Specimen,” for Oswalt. He brings empathetic complexity to the role of Dervey, an anxious journalist and collector with a gift for self-sabotage. The story shuttles between a scrapyard where Dervey is begging his friend Ellis (Dale E. Turner) to front him cash and a futuristic archaeology lab where a pair of scientists (played by Annie Ruby and Bobby Foley) are trying to decipher a message from the ancient past. In the episode’s short runtime, Byrkit delivers an intimate character study that’s also a philosophical meditation on the meaning of legacy.
Taken as a whole, Shatter Belt is a lot like the tech-heads circling that uncanny apple. The series raises universal questions without landing on any one answer, ferociously curious about what it will discover along the way. It’s thought-provoking stuff—and its DIY spirit, especially in a medium like TV, is downright inspiring.
