And the last thing I want to comment on is the effects. Others have said before that it would be impossible to update without the separating the pre FX shots…I don’t think so. After watching it, in the first seasons at least, there’s almost never any blended CGI/Live shots. The vast majority of CGI seems to take place in pure cgi shots with no live action at all, and when they are blended, it’s still not a true blend, just some cg backgrounds put behind the characters. Much like old school trek, the only time it happens in front of actors is the weapons fire effects. SO it could be done, although I can’t imagine a studio wanting to spend the time and money updating a show that wasn’t that successful even in it’s day. If someone DID have the inclination to update the effects, it wouldn’t be all that hard to replace the dated CG.
For the pure CG shots, yeah, you could update them and make them look good.
For the few composite shots (and there are a decent number that I can think of), it's simply not possible. I mean, you'd be right that you could just take the live action footage and map it into new effects....if the standalone live-action footage still existed.
It doesn't, though, and that's why fully fixing the f/x is basically impossible.
The separate components no longer exist. So, there
is no separate live-action shot to map into anything. The only footage of either the CG or the live-action elements for merged shots
are the merged shots themselves. And, to make matters worse, those merged shots are all native to TV resolution at the time.
Now, you might -- might -- be able to take the footage that exists and "upscale" it using computer programming to estimate what the details would've looked like, but either that tech doesn't exist, or it's prohibitively expensive for a super-niche property like B5.
All that said...it doesn't really matter. I mean, it stinks that you can't fix the footage, but the story itself holds up regardless. It's truly an amazing story and amazingly well told. It's one of my gold standards for televised storytelling, and a large part of that is due to the fact that one person wrote almost the entire thing -- and happened to write some terrific stuff, at that.
Anyway, enjoy the series! It's truly fantastic.
Oh! Almost forgot. You should probably slot the Thirdspace film into where it fits chronologically. You can look online for how that works.