pays lip service to the science and engineering part of the science fiction.

Star Trek has never been a properly science heavy franchise. You don't get The Expanse style of gritty space survivalism (pilots dealing with g-force strain, Spacers having to mine their water reserves, politicians negotiating across an 8 minute transmission delay between Earth and Mars). Every common engineering problem is solved with tech so futuristic it might as well be magic, while the serious problems are more ethical or philosophical (can we morally turn off a sentient computer? should we give these primitive people access to our warp drive technology? how do we negotiate with Space Wizards?)

The object oriented stories of science, engineering, exploration, discovery, philosophy or even technologies as a setting for character stories is largely absent now.

They never really existed in the Rodenberry universe. He was far more interested in the politics and the social consequences of interstellar travel than the nuts and bolts of getting around space.

When it came to practical applications, even Heinlein and Asimov (themselves chronic abusers of the SciFi tech hand wave) did a better job in books like The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Foundation.

they have little meaningful impact on the story or the audience.

Early Trek was really bad about continuity, generally speaking. It wasn't until late TNG and DS9 that you got real multi-episode arcs.

Later Trek was - if anything - too worried about continuity. They had to try and explain everything within the context of prior series, rather than just telling some interesting stories of a deep space exploration vessel chartered out of Earth.