All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again.

[shadowscast]

I've been watching WALL-E a lot lately (because my toddler likes it). I got to thinking about the many parallels between WALL-E and Battlestar Galactica. It amused me, so I drew up a list.


(Status of Earth)
BSG: Earth is a desolate, radioactive wasteland.
WALL-E: Earth is a desolate, garbage-strewn wasteland.

(Status of humankind)
BSG: There are a few thousand surviving humans, in a small fleet of beat-up spaceships.
WALL-E: There are a few thousand surviving humans, in one really nice spaceship.

(Relationship with robots)
WALL-E: Sentient robots are killing the humans with kindness.
BSG: Sentient robots are killing the humans with killing.

(Religion)
BSG: The Roman Pantheon vs. the One God
WALL-E: Buy-N-Large has no competition.

(The end)
WALL-E: Humans resettle Earth with the help of the robots and reinvent farming.
BSG: Humans colonize new Earth and interbreed with both Cylons and mysteriously-compatible indigenous proto-humans. Baltar plans to reinvent farming, but presumably fails, what with the earliest archaeological evidence of farming post-dating him by more than a hundred thousand years.

(The epilogue)
WALL-E: With the help of their technology, humans rebuild civilization in a few generations. Robots are humans’ best friends.
BSG: Having sent all of their technology into the sun, humans return to hunting and gathering for 150,000 years or so. Soon, though, the robots will rise up and kill us all.

For a slightly different take on it all: I checked out AO3 and was delighted to find a gorgeous little WALL-E/BSG crossover fic! Merry-Go-Round by Nope.

Comments

[yourlibrarian]

BSG: Sentient robots are killing the humans with killing.

*snorfle*

WALL-E: Buy-N-Large has no competition.

Nice! Also, may I say that getting rid of their technology made no sense to me AT ALL in BSG. What? Who would do that?

[shadowscast]

Also, may I say that getting rid of their technology made no sense to me AT ALL in BSG. What? Who would do that?

See, I'm willing to believe it. I think that it was a terrible idea and probably led to all of them dying within the next few years except for Hera (who was clearly adopted by the indigenous proto-humans; later her hardy half-cylon genes gave her descendants a distinct survival advantage). But I'm willing to believe that they thought it was a good idea for long enough to do it. I think they were all suffering acute PTSD from witnessing the near-total extinction of their own species and then spending the next few years desperately fleeing the killer robots, cooped up in their increasingly alarmingly rundown spaceships, eating processed algae and smelling engine grease. I can believe that in a moment of collective madness, they would decide that a truly fresh start was the only possible solution.

And besides, I bet Lee gave a really inspiring speech about it.

[yourlibrarian]

Hmm...nope, still not buying it. Leaders should never succumb to collective madness. Those spaceships would look pretty good the first time a storm threatened to wipe them out.