I could see it and the world of 2001 sharing an origin
Regarding f/x quality, sure.
"2001", unlike S1999, has no alien exploration or involvement at all - though more people ask if there is. Note the obelisk's shape and dimensions, the repetition of it in even the most innocuous of places, and there's much fun to be had. A movie that has a lot of people never getting a handle on it, myself included, some ask if the obelisk is door... a door that doesn't have a handle... and is a metaphor anyway. If you think of the obelisk as "the doorway" but tilted 90 degrees, you get the answer to a different question. But that's a bit out there, isn't it, to suggest the obelisk is a dimensional doorway as metaphor for the movie projector screen everyone's gawking at to see this little show someone penned then produced?
And each show is in its own universe, and this is where your point has far more piquancy, is that all the Alphans were knocked out and left to slowly die in the moon accident and they're living out these notions in the last minutes before death. At literal value, S1999's premise is the most asinine. Especially when the episodes hype up the laws of physics (while apparently nonplussed over what happened to Alpha and all events since, which are impossible due to the laws of physics - specifically that involving velocity.) But the show always went above and beyond the mere literal, and fairly great ways too... So, why not, the Alphans are fallen to the floor and all these memories are conjured up by them to while away the time. Creating their own shows they see to escape the reality of their situation, with their mind being the other side of an obelisk. If "War Games" was potent before and it's an outright fantastic episode no matter how you go into this show and its premise (overlooking or accepting the literal setup at face value)...
If the Alphans imagined their own situations they saw on the projector screen of their mind, S1999 is just a variation of the same theme. The only difference is, 2001 is a more literal and tangible shared experience. Not to mention, they say LSD addicts saved the movie from being a flop because of the slit-scan effects at the end... and slit-scan involves an opaque rectangular board with a slit in it to constrain the details regarding the effects' creation too... there's more meta in the slight of hand reflectrions than in a barrel of Metamucil...
