I took geology before plate tectonics was accepted. I would like some references and citations for your claim that continental drift was laughed.
When I took geology it was taken quite seriously, even though there was no known mechanism capable of moving continents.
By "taken seriously" I mean the evidence for it (and there was quite a lot) was enthusiastically discussed at the introductory course level.
One of the things that made continental drift a serious hypothesis is that it predicted things which were, in fact found. It was accepted in half a century.
On the other hand, ID has been around in its present form for two hundred years without bringing any data to the table or making any predictions about what kind of data should be found. It has done no research and proposed no research. It has proposed nothing which would support or falsify its claims. It says nothing about the designing entity, nothing about the purposes, motives or methods of the alleged designing entity. All of these are elementary parts of any forensic investigation.
Last of all, and most sadly, ID advocates would not even have been looking for an intermediate fossil. There is no explanatory ID hypothesis that would expect an intermediate fossil.
Just what I said ~ the old guys died off; the new guys bought it. Half a century. I gave it 40 years (covering mostly the real working careers of the geologists and allied researchers who found the new view useful).
Geologic Gradualism was dominant for a very long time. Louis Agassiz laid waste to that point of view ~ by demonstrating vast areas of glaciation.
At the same time he opposed the Darwinian view of "gradual change over time in some unknown way".
We can only imagine why he objected to gradualist philosophies.
In the the end the discovery of DNA put the sword to the unknown parts, and to the need for "gradual change". All you needed was a mutation, and it was Katy bar the door, eh?!
So, was Louis right or wrong when it came to Darwinian viewpoints?
Personaly I think the gradualist nonsense still infecting evolutionary theory is hanging on simply because we have modern antibiotics and the old fart$ are not dieing out fast enough. But, eventually, they will, and just in time for Mankind to take charge of his own genome.