Westworld and Battlestar Galactica share many similarities, beyond merely the search for robots in disguise.
The following contains spoilers for season 1 ofWestworldand the entirety ofBattlestar Galactica.
Your imagined suffering makes you lifelike.
Lifelike but not alive, the host responds.
Pain only exists in the mind.
Whats the difference between my pain and yours?
Between you and me?
The answer always seemed obvious to me, Ford says.
We cant define consciousness because consciousness does not exist.
No, my friend, youre not missing anything at all.
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Westworldis a well-crafted, worthwhile show.
What is the nature of humanity?
What are the similarities between heroes and villains?
Why are so many consumers still interested in Westerns?
With its most recent episode, Trace Decay,Westworldadmits that it is in fact playing into this game.
So it would seem that the show is instructing you how to watch it on one level.
Fords monologue after the reveal, however, undercuts that.
This is a bleak, fascinating idea.
Its also not entirely unique in television history.
The similarities betweenWestworldand the Syfy (then Sci-Fi) seriesBattlestar Galacticaare striking.
Both are remakes of somewhat cheesy 1970s science fiction franchises.
The aforementionedWestworldwas a film whileBSGwas a clearStars Warsknockoff on a frustrating TV budget.
Both feature a conflict between human beings and ultra-realistic humanoid robots.
And both even invent new terms for their respective bots hosts forWestworld, and cylons forBattlestar Galactica.
Throughout their journey, they are pursued by the Cylons.
That in and of itself is an interesting story, but the 2004 remake makes one significant change.
LikeWestworld,Battlestar Galacticahas big ideas.
Its post-9/11 timing shaded a lot of critical perception of it.
But it also featured the game-playing aspect fromWestworldthat viewers enjoyed.
It revealed early on that Sharon, one of the main characters, was an unwitting Cylon.
And from there, it was a race to discover who else could be.
But eventually, and at the end of every game, there is a solution.
At the end of every maze, in an exit (or entrance).
Battlestar Galacticahad fun making us guess who was human and who was a machine.
Ultimately,Battlestar Galacticacame to a different conclusion than whatWestworldis offering in its first season.
Battlestar Galacticafeatures many religious undertones.
That religious context makes the central premise sentient beings raging against their creator all the more poignant.
Cylons Number Six and Number Eight lead a cultural revolution among Cylon urging for a empathetic relations with humanity.
Its logical and meaningful then that the cause of the Cylon society fracturing is religious in nature.
He explains his beef with humanity to another human-friendly Cylon.
I dont want to be human, he says.
I want to see gamma rays!
I want to hear X-rays!
And I want to I want to smell dark matter.
Do you see the absurdity of what I am?
But I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws.
And feel the wind of a supernova flowing over me.
And I can know much more.
I can experience so much more.
But Im trapped in this absurd body.
This mindset is not dissimilar to Maeves experience onWestworld.
Maeve is the first host to become fully conscious of her robotic nature that were aware of.
And in response to this information, she understandably despairs.
Then as she processes it more, that same despair becomes anger.
Anger at humanity for forcing her to experience then relive the death of a loved one.
Anger that she has had no control or agency in her life.
But also anger in just how lacking she finds humanity.
Theyre easily manipulated, creeps, or both.
Shes definitely disgusted that her intelligence scores have been deliberately placed below that of humans.
Another crucial characteristic that Maeve and the hosts ofWestworldshare with their Cylon counterparts is the ability to resurrect.
Hosts inWestworldare repaired and restarted after dying in the park, and returned to their posts the next day.
Ive died a million times…Im great at it, she tells Felix and Sylvester to intimidate them.
In our civil war, weve seen death, she says.
Weve watched our people die.
As terrible as it was beyond the reach of the Resurrection ships, something began to change.
We could feel a sense of time, as if each moment held its own significance.
We began to realize that for our existence to hold any value, it must end.
To live meaningful lives, we must die and not return.
So its not entirely fair to compare the emotional journeys of the hosts to the Cylons.
OnWestworld, Robert Ford concludes the similarities exist in how equally mundane humans and hosts are.
By the end ofBattlestar Galactica, humanity finally finds a home on what we now call Earth.
One human-Cylon hybrid remains back on Earth.
Hera is the daughter of human Karl Agathon and Cylon Number Eight.
Deus ex machina issues with the finale aside, the message here is powerful.
Westworldmay one day come to a similar conclusion.
But for now, it presents the antithesis toBattlestar Galactica.
Humans and hosts are similar because the reality of life comes down to working parts and probability.
Ill admit, I hopeWestworldsticks to that misanthropic vision.
