I browse these boards every once in a while as a lurker, and I saw this topic. Since I am the one who asked the original questions, I thought I'd share my thoughts.
First of all, maybe a tad off topic, but I don't think it should be assumed that everyone thinks the Star Trek TOS HD editions are a silly concept. I have to admit, I was a bit surprised at some of the slightly knee jerk reactions over at the usenet group, although some had their points. Personally, I've seen a lot of arguments that go along the lines of 'everyone knows the SW Special editions sucked (seemingly a well established fact among SF fandom), this sound a lot like those Star Wars editions, so this will suck'. Which I don't think is entirely valid, since the original Trek versions, unlike SW up until a short time ago, will still be easy to get, and as far as I can tell, no story changes are being made for these Trek HD versions.
I wouldn't say doing a re-telicine of the Trek master tapes for HD is messing with the series, and I actually think that redoing some of the effects might actually help the storytelling, which is what it is all about, by being less distracting to modern audiences. Now, I'm a fan of original Doctor Who, so I know how to turn of my modern sensiblities of television watching, and enjoy these old shows for their story, but these new versions are making old Trek relevant again in a way that has actually given them a new and big syndication deal, that will bring them to living rooms of millions again, something that people who love these stories should be happy about. As far as the CGI effects go, they've only released one shot so far, of a CGI enterprise, so it's a bit hard to tell exactly how it is going to look. But that one shot did seem to indicate that they were trying to hit a same aesthetic, only a lot sharper, that will fit in well with the high detail HD picture. I really would not write it off as 'messing up Trek' at this point.
So err... that's my little rant on HD Trek, now on to the questions you raised. <g>
Would I like to see B5 in HD? Yeah, sure. It was shot on 35mm film, so when they shot the show, they did shoot all this extra detail. And I would love to see it. I like how the show looks, and to see it in a sharper way would make me happy. Also, an HD version could give the show new appeal to both networks and HD-DVD/Blu-ray consumers, and the more done to keep the format in which the story is told relevant, to give it a longer shelf life, to keep its appeal to those who would've written it of because of age or low budget looks otherwise, the better. To
quote JMS, talking about the new Widescreen versions that got made a few years ago:
Because of the trend to HD, the widescreen versions, even with these small glitches, will still have a longer shelf life than if we put them out in regular aspect ratio. And that is the purpose of the story, to keep it around.
Would I like to see to see the CGI redone? Oh yeah. If only because that was always the original intention when going to a widescreen version, and we only were denied that because WB lost the original computer files. And redoing it by hand then was going to be too expensive for the widescreen versions. And the CGI shots that are 4:3 frames cropped to look like widescreen are less than ideal. It's not even that bad for the space CGI shots, which look a bit blurry and aliased, but the framing looks sort of ok (to me), but with the CGI/live action composited shots, it just looks off. Because very often, you go from this nice full widescreen frame, to this 4:3 cropped frame to look widescreen, and it just looks jarring.
And those would probably stand out even more in a high resolution HD version, which was sort of my idea behind asking if such a hypothetical version could move whoever was funding to redo the CGI and composited shots, in a similar way to the Trek stuff.
In fact, small confession here, but I personally would actual care more about the CGI and comped shots being redone properly than HD. But I know that it is really unlikely that someone is going to come along and finance the CGI widescreen reworkings that were originally planned, but not done because of missing computer files. However, an HD version seems not totally unlikely to happen, and if that could prompt someone to redo the CGI and comped shots, it would make me happier for that than for the HD.
As for it being like a painting that shouldn't be messed with; they already sort of did. With the widescreen version. Which worked out really well for all the live action bits, and a bit less so for the comped and CGI shots.
