That’s a fair criticism and I’m not telling you your opinion on the show is wrong. But Discovery did have its fans, and I think it’s disrespectful to them and especially the cast & crew to say they deserved to get the Enterprise ending treatment, just because you didn’t enjoy the show.

The dislike of Discovery is a totally valid opinion, but this is a poor & disrespectful take. The show did a lot. I enjoyed it, even if it wasn’t my top trek show. Any trek deserves a proper, respectful send-off. You can point at the finale that we got and say that it wasn’t great, but honestly what do you expect with a few extra pages of writing and barely any shooting time? The actors and writers deserved an opportunity to actually end things properly, and instead they were given next to nothing and they did their best to make do.

I like this idea a lot, it might become my new head cannon!

Possibly. But how much more wear & tear would this be compared to the wear put on the warp drive, which gets incredibly frequent use? If that warp drive can withstand it, why not the shield emitters?

Yeah, I think the power-saving argument (#4) is potentially strongest, especially if the plot needs it to be for a given episode.

But I’m having trouble thinking of a situation in the shows where the maneuverability was limited by the shields. Certainly there are plenty of cases where power was routed to shields, maybe even the power that was meant for propulsion. But I think in general, those would be cases where power was already limited, or the need for defense was much higher. In general, I don’t think I recall a trade-off where shields restrict maneuverability or speed.