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"Yeah, but they were there. It sounds silly to argue this, but let's pretend this is real - why would the X-Men, who are supposed to be good upstanding people say "ah, that's not our jurisdiction. We only care about mutant stuff. Tough luck." One of the points that Claremont is very fond of is that even though the X-Men are mutants, that doesn't make them different from humans or other non-mutant superheroes. They are good people, and will do anything to help anyone if they can."
I suppose a comparison should be made with another Claremont influenced writer: Gaiman. Gaiman originally intended Sandman to run 30 issues, and it ended up running 75. This was because he liked something he'd started in one arc, and expanded it, which ended up making the series a lot longer (and richer) that it's original conception.
The first Brood arc happened like that. Claremont had introduced the Starjammers and the Shi'ar in one arc (and the idea when they were introduced was to spin them off into their own series), and liked them enough to bring them back periodically, especially since he'd established close ties between these characters and the X-Men. Plus, he had a left over plot thread with Deathbird from Ms. Marvel that he'd never explained, so he did it, here.
"But they shouldn't even be in space; they shouldn't be dealing with a creature like Phoenix: Claremont should have never created the Phoenix mythos in the X-Men; it didn't fit in the premise. Claremont wanted to tell it, should have waited for a chance at the Fantastic Four.
"I'm not saying that the X-Men shouldn't have stopped Phoenix: but that threat shouldn't have existed in a comic book about mutant/human relationship and conflict. It just doesn't fit in the storyline."
Another case of something being expanded. The original idea of Phoenix was just to upgrade and update Jean, as the 60s Marvel Girl in mini skirt and go-go boots was rather dated by the mid 70s. What was a simple upgrade at first took off, and grew and grew, to the point of being the definitive X-Men storyline, and pretty well opening the door for the very interesting comics we saw throughout the 80s. You have to remember that this was something that really hadn't been done, before.
"I think you'll be hard pressed to find a comic historian who doesn't credit the early Claremont days as revolutionizing comic storytelling, actually."
Including, significantly, Morrison. As he put it, early Alan Moore WAS Claremont. I'd add that Moore even had some of the qualities we complain about with Claremont, now. Swamp Thing had a LOT of narrative and exposition, to the point of making Claremont look downright sparse 
"Iron Man? Fucking Iron Man?"
The Wasp kicked the X-Men's collective asses, once.
"So no, I don't think all superheroes-in-space stories are bad - just when it's irrelevant to the characters. The Fantastic Four ARE at their best when doing grand cosmic space stuff. The inverse would apply to them - having the FF become urban street vigilantes would be a very bad idea, at odds with the conceptual heart of the series."
Sometimes that can work really well BECAUSE it's not where you usually find them. The last issue of Miller's second Daredevil run featured the Avengers, with Hell's Kitchen burning, and it worked. You wouldn't think Thor showing up in the middle of a Miller Daredevil story would fit, but Frank did it, perfectly.
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