I must frankly disagree about the value of the world profile! It is not that hard to memorize, and contains an amazing amount of information in a small space. You can print one line and give information enough for adventures on a whole planet!
The oddities in the world generation are, as noted, peculiar. They reflect their author's views on politics and can seem quite bizarre at times. I agree. They also gives some very unlikely results from a astrographical and logical point of view. It's heritage since 1977 and some of it was weeded out in The New Era game.
DGP published an expanded system in their book about exploring and surveying worlds, World Builders' Handbook. It gives some ideas on how to interpretate and manage the oddities. It will make the GM who likes to tinker a lot to do.
As for the game style portrayed and emphasized I have had troubles with it myself, but I think I know where it comes from. Traveller originally was designed to give a "scientific" look, with the funky numbers for stats and such. It was a design desicion to reinforce the "science" fiction feel.
Maybe the tone of the game is influenced a bit too much by this? DGP, the company who got the job of revising Traveller and write MegaTraveller, have talked about how they played. In character acting, funny voices and intra-personal relations was frequent. Thus I guess that the tone in the books might be the heritage from older Traveller books to be "scientific". I've found a few of my sessions to bog down in those kinds of stuff, and it works better without.
While I respect the reviewer might have valued things differently than me I'd have given it highter marks for Substance, since it's a very meaty book. Sure, the many errors and problems with layout makes it less than useful, but what's there is quite a bunch.
I do dream of a reorganized MegaTraveller myself, though.
Thanks for the review.