Sorry, I'm being facetious - that's why I used the little rude smileys - lol. I know that humour is a difficult concept but please don't take any of my comments too seriously. It helps if you post drunk.
The point that is valid is that it's a modern example of male/female senior/junior officers behaving inappropriately so I suppose the modern writers aren't much better today at keeping it professional than they were then. I'm British so Malcom Reed's style and the TMP style of greater professionalism feels more natural to me while the crew are on duty. I don't mind them straying a bit but they can go too far.
There is some evidence that her relationship affected her job though. She blackmailed the superior officer who was well within his rights to post her to a different ship even if temporarily (other ships need talented comms officers), she left her post to meet him in the tubolift, and while they edited out the part that gave her a valid reason to be in the transporter room, they wasted quite a few minutes on that goodbye kiss during a crisis when timing was critical. It would have annoyed me less if they had engaged in a brief, subtle bit of finger rubbing but I think the writers felt that might confuse some members of the audience for whom the concept of telepathic intimacy or any kind of subtlety is a foreign concept. They wanted to ram it home that Kirk knows about their realtionship so subtlely went out the window.
Having said that, overlooking the fact that Uhura left her post, the earlier scene in the turbolift was handled much better because, similar to the BoT scene, they were just people struggling to reconcile their emotions while on duty during a very traumatic event. Apart from the kissing, she didn't need to be his lover in that earlier scene - played differently it could have been Kirk or McCoy from a TOS episode making sure that he was ok both for emotional support and for professional reasons. The later scene just felt a lot more self-indulgent and unnecessarily over the top. Imagine Rand doing that to Kirk every time he beamed down to a planet!
"Mmmmm - look at my legs, baby. I'll have some hot coffee waiting in your quarters when you get back, and some food cubes, you know, just the way you like them..."
On topic: It is remarkable that they managed to produce some cracking sci fi in those early episodes from those rather cheesy sketches. I think later on the cheese started to take over a bit more though.
She'll be bringing him his plomek soup next.
