1) I don't think it's gimmicky at all. We don't necessarily get a lot of patient contact but we do placements for a few weeks in the year and do a professional development spine where we actually go to the medical school parts of the hospitals and learn about professional values. I think the sort of "drip" learning is quite good, you keep in mind how to act throughout the years.
2) It's not necessarily for surgeons but anatomy is instead an integral part of any medical course and dissection is pretty useful, it demonstrates the human body as it is instead of being some perfect full colour image in a text book. UCL do full cadaveric dissection which is one of the reasons I chose it.
3) It does provide you with an edge when applying for jobs, but I'm not sure how much difference it makes with sciences. But even if it does make a difference, it doesn't matter too much now, you've got a long time to think about it.