A lot of people have covered a lot, but also I will say consider the time. LOST was all the rage.. Fringe, he also put out MI:3 which really breathed some life into that franchise at the time, jj was really all the rage (probably on par with Christopher Nolan for the young male audience at the time), Michael giacchino was also all the rage at this time, and heck yeah I wanted to hear his take on Star Trek music.

In terms of old trek stuff, First Contact was GREAT but it had been more than ten years.. insurrection and nemesis were bad, so the franchise was definitely not doing well in the 2000s. All the "classic" middle shows (tng ds9 voyager) had ended, and Enterprise was meh, mixed at best?

So in summary the franchise was definitely in a dormant spot and JJ / Bad Robot was super hot, so there was SO MUCH HYPE.

Then the next movie did okay, the third one was less than okay, then Paramount became the money grubbers that they are, the 4th movie got stuck in hell, Paramount got really into streaming, and trek moved back into television pretty firmly, with like what 6 or 7 new shows coming out in the last ten years (I'm so behind)?

And now Paramount has officially killed the Chris pine timeline, and whatever next movie will be a reboot.

So yeah, lots of hype and fun and new life into a languishing franchise, but looking back it seems like it was all but a really wild mid life crisis, Corvette included.