Listening to Ron Moore’s commentary for last week’s “No Exit” and there’s a gem of a monologue from Ellen to Boomer that was cut out in the editing room. I understand why (as it might be a bit too self-referential) but I love it anyway:
Self awareness is not confined to the “real world”.
In theater, fictional characters are sometimes given a form of self-awareness. This is known as “breaking the fourth wall”.
The device is a form of metafiction, allowing characters to address the audience directly and comment on the narrative in which they themselves are participants. In doing so, the characters transcend their fictive nature and enter in a dialectical relationship with their viewer, with each side seeking to persuade the other the innate truth of their reality.
But does the character actually exist? Does it have form and shape beyond the page on which it is written? Can it ever truly break the fourth wall and address the unseen, undreamt of audience that watches its every move from the safety beyond the footlights?
The Lords of Kobol once felt that men could never break the fourth wall, could never look upon the gods with understanding and grasp the divine nature of life.
They believed this until one day men stole their fire and created the first Cylons, the first artifical life, and then men in his arrogance believed Cylons could never break the fourth wall and men believed that right up until the moment the first Centurions were built and then the great exodus from paradise began.
You see Boomer, we are not finite creations, we have the ability to evolve. You have so much more potential.
