That show was killed by it's budget.
After they got the high tech graphics two things happened.
They got lazy with their scene changes. If you watch, almost every time they go anywhere in Starbug, it's just the same animation, horizontally flipped with a different starscape behind it and they just repeat that three times (flip, flip, flip)
Also, the lack of a live audience or laugh track ruined another part of the atmosphere. It just added so much to the scenes.
Part of the appeal was the cheap look of the show, the semi-real styrofoam ship parts, they had decent looking stuff, but the fact that is was cheesy gave it charm.
Trying to make it into a semi-serious space adventure was a bad idea. If they had left things the way they were, it would still be in production today.