As much as I love Star Trek, it isn't really explaining all that much (it would be, if the writers could be arsed to read the technical manuals created for the series, but even the manuals themselves say they aren't mandatory reading, so here we are). It's DDoSing your disbelief with technobabble to allow for whatever plot the episode's writer had in mind.

(Though it's not impossible to make something relatively consistent out of Star Trek's universe; /r/DaystromInstitute is a subreddit essentially dedicated to doing just that. It's an exercise in function interpolation, but having lots of data points does constrain possibilities.)

> Most of the time, the story isn't about the technology (in the same way that Westerns aren't always about animal husbandry and gun manufacturing), and it's sufficient that you push some buttons, pull a lever and spaceship go brrr.

There's very little point in choosing sci-fi as your setting if your story is setting-independent. The westerns whose story is entirely interchangeable with action movies set in ancient times or present days don't tend to be very interesting movies (YMMV). Or at least I tend to avoid those, because I find them boring. With sci-fi, if the story is all about setting-independent human drama, I can have that with any other genre. I like my sci-fi when it extrapolates and elaborates on science and technology, and its impact on societies.