I rewatch B5 every few years. It still looks great with some exceptions (Vorlon planet killer looks like it didn't get much time).

A couple of years ago, I watched the whole of Star Trek TOS, TNG, DS9, and then Bablyon 5 one after the other.

So I have to ask whether you're using a modern TV and perhaps what your media source for B5 is. Because, frankly, most aspects of B5 pretty objectively haven't aged well (the elevator scene is one exception), and the FX renders are especially bad, at least from the DVD box set.

I fully believe it looked incredible at the time on a standard def CRT. But TNG still looks OK and DS9 looks good.

Are you watching a digitally remastered Star Trek?

I've watched B5 on CRT and various LCD. The station monitors obviously aged poorly, but a lot of ships still looked pretty good. Minbari Sharlin, White star...etc.

Originally you made a comparison to Star Trek.

But for the time it looked OK, especially on the typical bedroom 14" CRT.

He wasn't stating how it looked for the time, he was comparing it to star trek: the next generation, which used models and was shot on film while even high budget CG was still in its infancy.

Yeah I was basically just saying star trek spent a fortune, while B5 was done "on the cheap". I was wrong and forgot TNG still used models, but the overall comment still stands.