First, Intrepid is a really beautiful child theme. I'm tempted to use it on my own blog. :)

Thanks for the review. You managed to capture everything Stargazer is about. It found it tough to explain the "why" of the limitations, but you summed it nicely. I also felt that others would also feel too limited, but the only way to get past those limitations is to try your hand at designing a child theme. Once you do that, you can appreciate the system even more.

@Chip Bennett - Exactly. I remember how awesome it was back in the Sandbox days to just have a stylesheet. You were limited by Sandbox's structure and features, but you could use it as a canvas to make new designs. We've just over-complicated child themes since then. I'm hoping for a bit of a return to the good ol' Sandbox days. We now just have a few more fun things to work with thanks to more recent WordPress theme features.