I'll pick up your baton, mahogany. (mahogany baton, geddit?)
I think there's 2 aspects to the awesome-ness of this. First of all there's the technology; you take the biggest, heaviest rocket vehicle that ever existed and blast it off to the point of separation, at which time the pointy bit goes on to orbit. The remaining 3/4 of this biggest-heaviest-rocket-that-ever-existed continues ballistically to the Karman Line. You then adjust the trajectory to bring it back to the launch pad, relight the motors and have it literally hover until it's grabbed by the chopsticks.
The second aspect is the pure spectacle. Since we started recovering things from space in the 60's, there have only been 2 ways to do it, and both rely on aerodynamics:
One; you use unguided inherent vehicle-drag to decelerate to a (subsonic) point where a parachute becomes viable, then you allow it to simply fall to earth (Vostok, Soyuz, Mercury, Apollo etc).
Two; you design a vehicle of such resiliance that aerodynamic surfaces will withstand the kinetic heating, and use lift/drag to make a controlled flight to an aeroplane-type touchdown (Shuttle, Buran, X-15, X-37 etc).
In both these cases, the kinetic/potential energy of the orbital/sub-orbital vehicle is dissipated in a gradual and consistent manner from the time it encounters significant atmospheric drag. Coincidentally, this is about the point at which it becomes catchable by the TV technology of the day, so the public becomes accustomed to space shots returning in a sedate and controlled manner. What sets Starship apart is that the energy dissipated aerodynamically by the vehicle is consistent but minimal until the it is less than a mile from the Earth; at this point, well with sight and earshot of ground observers, it is still falling vertically, supersonic, going backwards, and impact seems inevitable. Only at a height of 1000 metres do we get synchronous sonic boom, flame, thunder and violent deceleration.