Sure, but there's a difference between medium-soft sci-fi and space fantasy. Star Trek is deeply unrealistic, but it at least attempts to, as you say, use its gadgets to explore interesting premises. Star Wars is fantasy with ray guns.

Star Trek are basically Greek-style morality plays. They could as well be e.g. Aesop-style fables in most instances. And they adopt traditions of Greek theatre of clearly signposting the characters through appearance without worrying the least bit about hitting the viewer over the head with it.

Less so in the newer series, but TOS, TNG, Voyager and DS9 very much follows a structure of setting a scene, introducing a conflict that at it's core is usually based around a simple dilemma of morality or ethics, and having a part of the resolution be a dialogue that explicitly addresses the dilemma.

A lot of Star Trek comes really close to being "fantasy with ray guns" too, let's be honest.

I mean, which is really sillier, subspace or hyperspace?

The difference comes in what they do with it. In Star Wars they "just" pursue the interests of the characters, and the focus is on the excitement, while in most of Star Trek the resolution of conflict is about solving some moral dilemma.

They're very similar in that the tech is mostly veneer, but they're very dissimilar in why the details of the tech doesn't matter.

It's often exactly that, for sure. But sometimes it tries for something more.

I wish it were more often used to flesh out how things could work differently. Like an introduction to ideas outside the mainstream.