LOTRO & Babylon 5

Today I felt a little better.. had a full day of really doing nothing to recoup from con.. planned to start getting things going again with painting and such.. but of course Lord of the Rings Online started their Summer Festivities and me still not feeling 100% decided to check them out.

I spent the next six hours running around the Shire finding missing items and then fishing in various lakes and I have to say.. online fishing is just as boring as real life fishing.. might even be worse. All of this just to collect Summer Festival Tokens so I can get some cool clothes, house items and mounts. Don't get me wrong I had a blast and it's daily and running until the beginning of August.. so I'm sure I'll be doing it again and again real soon.

Headed out to Robert's for our TV night. If you're a regular follower of my blog you know we've been watching Buffy (Rewatch for me and 1st time for him). Well we finished that a few weeks ago so we had to decide on a new series and we choose something that neither of us had seen.. Babylon 5. I may have watched a few episodes of season one back when they first aired but I honestly don't remember a single thing about the series.

We start with S1 Ep 1 "Midnight on the Firing Line" When the Narn attack a Centauri colony, Londo and G'Kar nearly come to blows. Meanwhile, raiders are attacking transport ships near the station.

I good episode to start with... you really get to know the main characters, especially Londo and G'Kar. The effect are a bit cheesy and they weren't meant to be seen on a 60" big screen. But I'm not an HD/CGI snob so I got use to it and didn't let it distract me from the story.

Next was S1 Ep 2 "Soul Hunter" A badly damaged ship is brought into the station, and the strange alien inside is identified as a Soul Hunter — an immortal race who can sense death and supposedly steal someone's soul.

I really enjoyed this episode, we get more back story for Delenn, she's hiding something. We're introduced to the new stations doctor. And this one really made you think about afterlife and what these aliens were doing.. was it a good thing? It really got Robert and I talking.

Our third episode of the night is S1 Ep 3 "Born to the Purple" Londo's career is in jeopardy when a beautiful slave seduces him and steals a sensitive computer file. Garibaldi investigates an unauthorized use of a restricted communications channel.

Cute episode.. I liked seeing Londo in love and I really liked his girlfriend. I liked that she was concerned about appearance but Londo didn't care.. this showed some real good character aspects in Londo that I liked. I also liked the B story with Garibaldi finding out that it's Lt. Cmdr. Ivanova talking to her dying father in secret. I mean this poor women.. we find out in the first episode that her mom was a telepath and eventually committed suicide and now her dies dies in front of her.

Next up S1 Ep 4 "Infection" Dr. Franklin gets a visit from old friend and mentor, xenoarcheologist Dr. Hendricks. He wants Franklin's help to analyze hi-tech organic artifacts he found on a dead world. But the artifacts seem to have a will of their own, and start to manipulate Hendricks' assistant.

I think this was my least favorite of the bunch that we watch.. though it was still very enjoyable. I kept questioning Robert as to why the Captain always seems to be risking his life and at the end Garibaldi questions the Captain on why.. I love that.

And our final episode of the night S1 Ep 5 "The Parliament of Dreams" Sinclair's old flame, Catherine Sakai, arrives during a weeklong festival when humans and aliens demonstrate their religious beliefs. An old enemy sends an assassin to kill G'Kar.

Another enjoyable episode, at first you think G'Kar is going to be this horrible person / bad guy but he is actually some comedy relief as well. I liked that we got to know the Captain a bit better. I enjoyed seeing the different religious ceremonies and G'Kar trying to stay alive was hilarious... a great way to end our first viewing of Babylon 5.

As we were watching some folks tweeted me and asked if we watched the Pilot episode.. I guess their was a 2 hr pilot that came before the series.. We had no idea.. it's unusual for a series box set to not have all the episodes.. come to find out that though it's part of the series they did some revamping of characters from the pilot to the series. I was told that we really don't need to watch it but both Robert and I want to see it all so will have to go back and watch that next time we get together. We're only five episodes in so it shouldn't be to much out of sync.

So today was a good day.. played some LOTRO, got to see my best bud (who I missed even though I saw him only a few days prior) and we started to watch what looks to be a pretty awesome tv series. Can't wait to see more...