So im watching a tos episode and the away team can’t contact the ship and the ship is drawn away from the planet. Now I recall this as sorta a common plot device in star trek. communication is not always blocked but basically the ship has to leave the away team on a plane to deal with something. Here is the thing. Why don’t they ever launch a shuttle to stay at the planet. I mean maybe more than one. This is especially true come tng where the shuttles I think tend to have transporters. I mean feels like a no brainer to me.
As far as I recall, the reasons for not being able to beam up the crew would be similar to not being able to retrieve a shuttle.
You also had the issue where the expense of having a shuttle on set and adding the VFX would have been higher than transporting the crew, so the writers kept with transporting.