Similar logic has been used to keep certain technologies with military applications secret until there’s no sense hiding it, ie. radar, nuclear weapons, stealth aircraft, electronic computers. It’s not much of a stretch to assume Starfleet might act accordingly with the spore drive. edit: as far as discontinuing the use of the drive and burying the research is concerned, there are a million reasons why Starfleet would want to do that. The ethical concerns from using a living being as a component, the damage it does to the native life forms in the network, the potential to destroy all life in all universes if misused, easy access to a parallel universe run by an insane fascist perversion of the Federation, these are all perfectly good reasons to throw the research down the memory hole.
Star Trek is a vehicle for many different stories is the point. A comedy series is just a valid and doesn't render it less Star Trek than isolated scenes that are played for comedic effect. I was thinking about this and I realized the films/series that have made me cry the most started out as comedy series. Let's not sell this one short.
In "Tomorrow is Yesterday," it was a freak accident that caused no end of trouble. Then they tried to use it for routine historical research in "Assignment: Earth" and nearly triggered a nuclear war! Clearly, it's risky business even if you think you know what you're doing. Heck, McCoy accidentally wiped out the entire Federation just by saving Edith Keeler that one time.
Disintegrating the homeless guy was key to creating their timeline which is why we had a data revolution in the late XX century and no Eugenics War
Please see our discussion regarding what actually happens to people and phasers, do to the large amount of energy involved.
Actions speak louder than words. I'll have to reverse my position. I've done a lot of defending of Picard today, even though it's more muted than when I defend Discovery. It's still there. They put out a good trailer.
In a Spock to Bond comparison: Leonard Nimoy is like Sean Connery. Everyone else is everyone else, and wherever they land depends on who we're talking about.