Comment by DharmaPolice

I don't cringe because it's for dramatic/narrative effect. It's the same reason the crew of the Enterprise regularly beam into dangerous locations rather than sending a semi-autonomous drone. Or that despite having intelligent machines their operations are often very manual, as it is on many science fiction shows. The audience (if they think about it) realises this is not realistic and understands that the vast majority of our exploration would be done by unmanned/automated vessels. But that wouldn't be very interesting.

Other universes take it further - Warhammer 40k often features combatants fighting with melee weapons. Rule of cool and all that.