I choose to believe that it's usually like that, and we're just seeing the days where something interesting happens.

Hey look, it's Starfield!

realistic scifi can be fun for general audiences still. they just have to focus on the right bits.

look at the early seasons of for all mankind. it's about the realistic process of achieving space flight goals. it spends 60% of its runtime on how the launch even comes to happen. then it shows the bits that go wrong and the ways they manage fix them and the political/personal drama of the decision making process on all sides.

now, that's a very dry show for people that like science, politics, and history, but the realistic scifi could just as easily be wrapped in a funny show about dumb politicians and crazy rich people. use the same strategies, but make it about the engineers at space x having to work under musk. show them having to suddenly pivot away from lidar for no reason other than musk's ego. show them trying to talk about space flight with a podcast bro. create drama when one of the main character's lives is actually on the line because no one trusts the new valve gasket supplier musk brought in for political clout.

the parts stat trek glosses over are the parts realistic scifi focuses on. like how they decide what planet to go to next. the episode always starts with them already there or randomly being drawn somewhere. or like what actual physics would matter in what they're doing and not "plasma phase inverter coils" needing to be "degaussed of subspace radiation".

The aliens didn't go there though. They're just there.