I also don’t think it was too bad for its time, but I think it was too early to rely on CGI to that extent. Great show though.
The station still looks pretty great...
This isn't Trek where the Enterprise is a character in and of itself. This is more Deep Space Nine.
Babylon 5 is about politics and personalities, the spaceships and stuff are just the background.
Tom Bakers Doctor Who I think is the best example of using a shoestring budget to tell huge sci-fi stories well. B5 takes a lot from that book.
I watched it then, and i can tell you that NO, it wasn't pretty good for the time nor the media, it was terrible even for that time. Not because their CGI was particulary worse, but because all CGI was terrible at the time. The technology wasn't ready yet to do much, so everyone else at the time relied on practical effects, miniatures, and built full set; but for practicality and cost reasons they decided to use the crude CGI of the time for many things that were not good enouth at the time, and it shown terribly.
In subsequent seasons they walked back that decision slightly, mostly abandoning CGI for indoor scenes in favour of building sets for their actors like everyone else. And the last few seasons had fairly good CGI for external shots of the station and ships, because by that time the tech evolved to be good enouth (that is when you start seeing such CGI being used in all other shows as well).