Open Your Mind

Timebelt

Happy New Year!

...

Am I a bit late for that?

Okay well, now that the holidaze are out of the way, back to some serious vid posting.

Speaking of being late for things, time to switch on the wayback machine, at least in Internet time - back to the far off year of 2003. Before 2003 I was interested in online video in a fairly abstract sense. I thought that somehow, some way, eventually something interesting might happen and enable independent artists like me to magically Do Something On The Internet. I just didn't quite see how. Then somebody told me about a weird little festival-type-thingie out of Los Angeles called Channel 101 (self styled as "the unavoidable future of entertainment"). The idea was simple: Once a month a group of video makers would put on a screening of "TV Shows" - each under 5 minutes in length - and the audience at that screening would vote on which ones they liked the best. The top 5 would be "picked up" like any network show, and allowed to make more episodes for the next month. Any other show, whether "pilot" or "prime time" coming into that month's screening, would be ruthlessly cancelled. It all sounded brutally fun, but I never would have cared much if they hadn't put the shows up on the Internet. I discovered them about three screenings in, watched every show and was hooked. The show I liked best at that time was Timebelt. A quirky sci-fi series in the best tradition of bad 70's television, Timebelt was one of the top five shows from the first Channel 101 screening, and was the last of those original Prime Time shows to be cancelled. Over 8 episodes Dr. Daniel Bloom, who had lost the love of his life to a space shuttle accident, travelled through time looking for a way to save her, and righting wrongs along the way. Seemingly undefeatable at screenings, Timebelt creator Chris Tallman voluntarily ended the series a year later. At the time it was the longest running show in Channel 101 history.

Speaking of Channel 101, this weird little festival has attracted quite a following. Jack Black, and Drew Carey have both had shows in Prime Time, a pilot was produced for the F/X network, the creators of The 'Bu have gone on to Saturday Night Live (and were responsible for my Uncensored Christmas post), and there is now a sister festival in New York called Channel 102.

As for the show that got me hooked, for some reason the first episode is no longer available at the Channel 101 site. I found it at the official Timebelt site, along with the rest of the episodes in ipod format (most video players should handle this, and certainly Quicktime will).

So here it is. Timebelt Episode 1.

UPDATE 03/01/07 2:51 PM
The link to the video has been fixed. I wrote the first draft for this post in November, and the link had moved since then. It should work now.