I know this is how people in the 80s and 90 imagined the future and a lot of concepts were probably too far fetched for them.
BUT... why arent they using drones to explore planets? why are there not more drone-spaceships? why does enterprise need a crew to begin with? Why is there so little automation? Why so few uses of AI in general?
I am saying this as a star trek the next generation person. I'd also expect them to have full video and sensory streams of any surface mission teams.
Exactly, media moves so much faster now, so they literally had a smaller frame of reference and were exposed to far fewer of these ideas than modern audiences. We take it for granted now, but it used to be difficult to get your hands on media that was more obtuse or complicated, because often they didn't have copies at your local library, and as such, audiences back then just wouldn't have the frames of reference that we do in allowing us to understand the concepts and references to other existing media.