Picard Broke the Fourth Wall, But Did Anyone Notice?

[Navarro]

I must have watched every TNG episode half a dozen times or more, but I noticed something for the first time today. In S4E10 "The Loss," about thirty-six minutes into the episode, Picard seems to break the fourth wall. The Enterprise appears stuck, and attempts to free the Enterprise from whatever force holds it captive, and in fact gradually propels it forward, have been met with no results other than damage to the ship and injury to the crew. Picard troubleshot the issue, but the obvious solutions lead nowhere. Picard eyes a silent Riker with an expression of irritation and concern, then turns his eyes to the camera. He says nothing, but he communicates the same information to the audience that he had just moments before communicated to Riker.

It took me several episodes to notice this brief but strange moment in Star Trek. Have you noticed it? Is this moment unique, or have you noticed others as well?

 

[F. King Daniel]

There's the time McCoy turned to the camera at the end of an episode of TOS and said, "Whaddya know, I finally got the last word!"

 

[Tosk]

Picard throws a camera take at us in The Drumhead too.

 

[Navarro]

There's the time McCoy turned to the camera at the end of an episode of TOS and said, "Whaddya know, I finally got the last word!"

You're right - Babel. Makes sense. TOS was much more relaxed and comedic than the spinoff incarnations. A lot of cartoon-like elements in TOS, with that one almost being a Bugs Bunny moment.

Would love to see a more laid back, comical series in the future, staying true to the TOS formula. Would be an interesting experiment.

Picard throws a camera take at us in The Drumhead too.

Does he? Goes out of his way to look into the camera? I'll have to take another look.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

There's the time McCoy turned to the camera at the end of an episode of TOS and said, "Whaddya know, I finally got the last word!"

Don't forget in Undiscovered Country when Kirk starts getting with the alien woman and he conspicuously rolls his eyes at the camera.

 

[Tosk]

Don't forget in Undiscovered Country when Kirk starts getting with the alien woman and he conspicuously rolls his eyes at the camera.

When Kirk and Martia start making out, McCoy closes his eyes and lays back on his bunk.

Does he? Goes out of his way to look into the camera? I'll have to take another look.

Roughly the ten or eleven minute mark (NTSC) just as the ep goes into an ad break.

 

[Christopher]

There's a difference between a character overtly acknowledging and addressing the camera and a character just staring into space in a direction that the camera happens to be in. For instance, in the closing shot of "Journey to Babel," McCoy is facing the camera, but his eyeline is just off to the side of the camera instead of directly into it. If you saw someone looking toward you that way, you'd conclude they were looking at something over your shoulder rather than meeting your gaze directly. He's not literally addressing the audience; in-story, he's talking to the other people in sickbay. Metatextually, it's meant to resemble him addressing the audience, but it doesn't make it explicit enough to break the reality of the story.

This is a pretty common thing in shots just before ad breaks, to have the camera pointing head-on at a character to focus on their reaction, but that doesn't mean the character is actually looking at the camera. Just doing a head-on close-up is not enough to qualify as breaking the fourth wall. That requires the characters to look directly at the camera and speak to the audience, as opposed to looking in its rough direction while speaking to themselves or others in the scene. Or it requires them to say or do something that acknowledges that they're fictional characters. That sort of thing does happen, but usually only in comedies. I remember Gilligan speaking directly to the camera sometimes or the Skipper throwing an exasperated look at the audience. The Green Acres cast were constantly aware of the onscreen credits or the background music, to the endless confusion of Oliver, the one character who lacked their Deadpool-like metatextual awareness. And then there's something like The Monkees, where the characters were constantly aware they were on a TV show and constantly tearing down the boundaries of the fiction, even to the point of storming off the set and heading to the writers' room to complain about the script (with the writers turning out to be a room full of chimpanzees with typewriters). Which goes back to the style of radio comedians like Jack Benny and Burns & Allen, whose shows were part-sitcom, part-dramatizations (comedizations?) of the making of the shows themselves, so that they constantly straddled the gaping hole where the fourth wall would be.

 

[Mojochi]

I've noticed it in more than one episode too. Stewart is a master at looking into the camera, but also conveying that he isn't, so not to actually break the fourth wall by acknowledging the audience. It's a 3 dimentional set & he can be focusing on any given part of it, despite the camera cutting in on his gaze. He makes it the camera's fault that he's looking into it. It's a very subtle nuance, when he does it, because he plays so close to it all the time anyhow, that it's only a matter of microscopic fractions of movement to be there, as opposed to any Nth degree off it. The man can play any stage, whether it be composed of acres or millimeters, a marionette pantomiming to a field of gathers or just a face, housed in a face-sized box

 

[mos6507]

Whenever a character looks into the camera lens you risk the audience feeling directly addressed regardless of the intention of the filmmakers. It's not necessary for a character to wave his hand and say "hi audience!". That's why you have to be really careful when you do it. You're just not in control of the reaction it causes.

 

[Nebusj]

Which goes back to the style of radio comedians like Jack Benny and Burns & Allen, whose shows were part-sitcom, part-dramatizations (comedizations?) of the making of the shows themselves, so that they constantly straddled the gaping hole where the fourth wall would be.

To take a tangent, the fourth-wall-play of these shows could be stunningly deft. There's an episode of the Burns and Allen TV show in which Burns, while wandering around 'outside' the house addressing the audience, sees a couple coming up to the door. He dashes back around the set so he can be there to answer the door. But while he's doing this, the woman's hat starts falling off, and he straightens it. The woman, making the reasonable guess, thanks her husband for the help; he has no idea what she's talking about, while Burns runs around the edge of the house. It's so light and effortless a thing that the viewer could miss it entirely. But the in-universe logic of the moment is so grand. It has to rate up there with a bit on The Muppet Show where Kermit blows out a candle, then asks the audience to think about it.

(Also one of my favorite Jack Benny show recordings out there is from a show rehearsal, of an episode that was set as ``here's what happened at rehearsal''. The episode is otherwise about average for the program in that era, but that extra bit of it being the real rehearsal of a fake rehearsal makes it all the better.)

 

[Prax]

Has anyone ever seen the Fresh Prince episode where Will is in the living room sitting on the couch, and Uncle Phil is yelling about something "I keep a roof over your head!" then uncle Phil leaves the room, Will looks directly at the camera and says "but we ain't got no roof," then the camera pans up and you see the studio ceiling.

It's hilarious.

 

[Mage]

Has anyone ever seen the Fresh Prince episode where Will is in the living room sitting on the couch, and Uncle Phil is yelling about something "I keep a roof over your head!" then uncle Phil leaves the room, Will looks directly at the camera and says "but we ain't got no roof," then the camera pans up and you see the studio ceiling.

It's hilarious.

It was slightly different. It was uncle Phil saying they're rich. Will looks at the camera, and says 'If we're so rich, how come we can't afford no ceiling?' and the camera pans. Still hilarious though.

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[Prax]

It was slightly different. It was uncle Phil saying they're rich. Will looks at the camera, and says 'If we're so rich, how come we can't afford no ceiling?' and the camera pans. Still hilarious though.

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Lol. That's funny when the 3 siblings are like "That's right, we are rich.

 

[Christopher]

I don't remember the acting on that show being quite that broad.

 

[gillmanjr]

I must admit I have never noticed that but I do know the exact moment you are referring to. I've seen The Loss at least 5 times myself, I'll have to watch it again.

 

[JesterFace]

Picard almost goes through the 4th wall in the end of 'Ship in a Bottle' when he's telling the crew that for all they know all this (their adventures) could just be something in a box sitting on someone's table.

 

[Christopher]

Picard almost goes through the 4th wall in the end of 'Ship in a Bottle' when he's telling the crew that for all they know all this (their adventures) could just be something in a box sitting on someone's table.

That's a much better example. The "fourth wall" concept isn't just about looking in the direction of the camera, it's about saying or doing something that acknowledges the artificial nature of the work. Although that's more like what TV Tropes calls "leaning on the fourth wall" rather than breaking it. Picard's line still works in-universe as just a silly musing, but it's a deliberate wink at the audience on the writers' part.

 

[Mojochi]

I always thought that episode would work better if Barclay said "end program" at the end & then it DID, & it turns out to be a Barclay program designed to "free" Moriarty, because he pitied him

 

[Tosk]

I seem to recall Riker literally breaking the fourth wall in Frame of Mind.

 

[Nakita Akita]

I must have watched every TNG episode half a dozen times or more, but I noticed something for the first time today. In S4E10 "The Loss," about thirty-six minutes into the episode, Picard seems to break the fourth wall. The Enterprise appears stuck, and attempts to free the Enterprise from whatever force holds it captive, and in fact gradually propels it forward, have been met with no results other than damage to the ship and injury to the crew. Picard troubleshot the issue, but the obvious solutions lead nowhere. Picard eyes a silent Riker with an expression of irritation and concern, then turns his eyes to the camera. He says nothing, but he communicates the same information to the audience that he had just moments before communicated to Riker.

It took me several episodes to notice this brief but strange moment in Star Trek. Have you noticed it? Is this moment unique, or have you noticed others as well?

It was the moment I KNEW he was speaking to me, I was a member of the bridge crew.
However due to our disparity in rank, he could not permit himself to speak out loud to me, but it was obvious that he wanted to. (He told me so later)


Okay not really, I never noticed it right next to the 123,456 other things I seem to not notice.