Water cooling was definitely a little dated.
Artistic types typically can't think their way out of a wet paper bag. Analytical types can't write for shit. It's a poor combination when you're trying to get a script that's both realistic and entertaining. After that, you have the bean counter angle. Licensed works have a heavy penalty on their budget, and a premium on their quality. They can be expected to sell simply because of their IP, and those sales results are levied heavily to pay the owners. There is a great disincentive to make them creative and interesting, that's the part that takes real effort. There's also generally zip control, particularly in the case of Star Trek, over lame shit being added in.
Having done this particular task myself, it takes a great deal of thought and research to create interesting capabilities that are also canon. Any idiot can write crap like "Chain Reaction Pulsars" in ST: Armada, making shit up takes a couple minutes, finding something to use can take days. Writing your own IP is much easier in that regard.