It wasn't exactly an "act of desperation". Roddenberry and crew had to come in on time and under budget. That's live or die in TV. Roddenberry was heavily influenced by "Forbidden Planet", and originally wanted to land the ship. But special effects were handmade and tricky back then, and thus, expensive. As the concept of the ship grew, they realised the thought of landing a 14 story ship was ludicrous. Then came the idea of the shuttlecraft. They actually had the shuttlecraft in the first season, "Galileo 7", but that too was finicky model work.
Then they hit on the idea of the transporter. A simple lap disolve, a little sparkle, voila! The same effects had been used for years to make ghosts dissappear, etc. so any effects company could do it. And the facts that it looked cool and got the characters into the story faster were a happy bonus.
Even at the beginning, people pointed out problems with the idea. Early on, they had a consultant from the Rand corporation as a science adviser. I think his name was Kellam DeForest, but I have to find my copy of "The Making of Star Trek". He would read a script, and send back a memo with notes about his concerns. One said, in effect, if the transporter can get you into a story fast, can't it also get you out of a story fast? If Captain April (the original script captain's name) and company get into a scrape, why not just beam out? The science adviser then asked, "Where's the fun in that? Where's the adventure?" He was less concerned with the science of it than the guy in front of his TV screaming at the tube, "Moron! Beam up!"
But the magic transporter also created stories. Two of my favorites, "Enemy Within" and "Mirror, Mirror", could not have happened without the transporter.
As far as the science, other authors have pointed out that the transporter in effect destroys the person beamed, disintegrates him, if you will, and turns him into a beam of energy, which is the fired at the planet. I mass about 76 kg. Using E=MC 2, if I did my math right, is about 6.8e18 joules, about the amount of energy released by the Indian Oacean earthquake that caused the tsunami. Seems beaming down is an act of war! Also, the system has to be 100% efficient, since any losses come out... where? Your heart, lung, brain?
Also, let's say Ensign Redshirt gets lunched by the monster du jour. Why not put 76 kg of sand through the transporter with Ensign Redshirt's pattern, and voila, new Ensign Redshirt. In fact, why wait until he's dead? Why not just keep replicating Ensign Redshirts to make a replicated army? There was an SF story like this, where scientists were trying to get into a trapped alien vault on the moon. They chose a soldier, beamed him up to the vault, with full telemetry. The first trap kills him. They note what it did, figure a way to defeat it, beam him up again with the new info. Beam, die, repeat.
For your own peace of mind, some sort of space warp portal, like Heinlein's "Tunnel in the Sky", would save you many headaches.
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