Just to update on my situation:
I got a very nice email from Shrapnel this morning saying that my replacement CD is on the way. They really are an excellent publisher/company and none of my frustration over any of this was intended to indicate anything otherwise. I can only wish that the Ataris of the world were more like Shrapnel. They're super. This is what builds customer loyalty.
I decided to try to load Starfury on my old P3 450 rig just to see if it would run on there by some chance. I got the same identical problem there I have on my new rig. I'm hoping like mad that this means it's just a bad CD.
What worries me though is that I can see no defect at all on the disk. No scratches or anything, even when looking at it with a powerful magnifying glass it looks perfect (though I did notice a kind of faint wavy watermark pattern like an amoeba around the center of the disk). And it did install fine without hanging at all on any of the files. I can browse all the files on the disk with an editor without hanging. Very, very weird. At least I'm not the only one having problems, it appears.
What I'm still afraid of is that this may not just be something as simple as a scratched CD. Maybe something in the creation process?
Well, I should hopefully know for sure when the replacement gets here next Tuesday at the earliest (no US mail delivery on Monday, just my luck).
In any case, I'm not unhappy with the game or with Shrapnel or MM. I've just been frustrated by my pure, dumb, bad luck.
-ColdSteel