On the flip side a lot of times the only reason characters survive encounters with entities far more powerful than them is a laser like focus on understanding what an unknown entities motivations are.

I love it when a Star Trek captain phones up some evil looking spaceship that is blowing shit the fuck up and is like “what is it precisely that you want?”. The alien picking up inside the ship usually doesn’t want to talk and it takes the captain cutting through several layers of bullshit until they discover why and the why usually drastically changes the situation.

At the same time, this strategy isn’t portrayed in a naive way that encourages aliens to walk all over starfleet, when you understand the motivations of romulans you understand you better blow them the fuck up if they start testing you or they will see it culturally as a weakness and invade…

Further, there are entities that are just an order of magnitude more powerful that can’t be stopped with any degree of force like Q and the characters just have to deal with it which I like because it keeps Star Trek from becoming a power fantasy about super heroes.