Good point about the Yiridians, lol. They surely “acquired” the technology somehow.
But as for B5, they are only fighting gravity (more realistic for our current real level, of course), while in Star Trek they are creating it via a graviton field. Way cooler, and entirely fair, it IS Science Fiction, after all. ;)
Re holodecks, admit it , you’d love one yourself!
That scientific advances are more even distributed in Star Trek is true, but why is that so unlikely? You trade, you share, you steal, and they are all humanoid, after all, all going into space. The finer points might differ, but the principles…all advanced races will get them. Wasnt there this NG episode where they explained where the humanoid races came from? Seems logical to me that they develop in the same direction, if coming from the same “source”.