In the end a contract is only as valid as the enforcement behind it.

Between two people of the same nation, a court willing to say "Yeah that's valid" and enforce it with the power of the state makes a contract quite powerful.

Between two entities that cannot agree on a means to arbitration, or have that means enforced on them, it's basically only as valuable as their willingness to accept it.

"A contract is a contract is a contract... but only between Ferengi" might seem like a straight up dismissal of another's species rights to be negotiated with, but its also a warning. If the Ferengi authorities don't have the power and will to enforce your contract with a Klingon living in free space, then a contract lacks the enforcement clauses that make it absolute.

So how binding is it? As binding as the parties allow it to be.

Let's imagine the baby Gorn start off the way you describe, a perpetual small hunter that also produces more offspring. As they age they get bigger and stronger before they finally die.

The adults who take care of their offspring have an advantage over adults who do not care for their offspring, and possibly even more over the babies who never become adults.

There is another selection barrier as well. If all you have are baby gorn, what happens when you run out of hosts? This can easily happen if the hosts are over-hunted. If baby gorn pop out and there are no hosts, and they die out in a few years or even months, that's an evolutionary dead end. The ones which can last a long time until new hosts are available will eventually be selected for.

The problem with crowning The Voyage Home as the best Star trek movie is that the Enterprise is absent.

It's not like you need the Enterprise for good Star Trek. Many of the best episodes have not really used the ship. But for a movie to be the pinnacle of Star Trek in fan reactions, the absence of the Enterprise is keenly felt.

If I was going to put any movie up against The Wrath of Khan it would be the Undiscovered Country. Everything I like about TWoK returns in The Undiscovered Country. An iconic and interesting antagonist? Check. A starship battle decided by clever outthinking of the enemy instead of a situation where the main character and antagonist end up in punching match? Also check. Kirk confronting his place in a world that keeps passing him by? Also check.

If I had to ask why does TWoK beat out TUC, and it only does by the narrowest of margins, it's that TWoK has slightly more universal themes. The Undiscovered Country is about the end of the Cold War, and if you grew up in that time, it resonates strongly. Treating your old enemy with respect, moving past your old hate, these are things which landed much harder in the early 1990s than the early 2020s.

But growing old, life passing you by, old mistakes coming back to haunt you, the danger of revenge, all those stand out today as well as they did when the movie first aired.

TWoK aged better than the others, though not by much. Many of the other movies are very, very good. I personally rank TUC and TWoK almost even.

I do think TWoK has in my mind soured a little for the same reason that First Contact did. Its success ensured we'd get so many attempts to dip into the same well again. But that's a very subjective issue, and one which it's hard to really hold against TWoK.

While it was played as a joke, the whole "was she hiding something" had me on first watch going "but everyone is hiding something, surely"

Spock was highlighting this with his trademark precision.

Jumping on your notes of Criminal Justice: In the episode "Ensign Ro" there was this throwaway line

RO: Well, if he's sent to the stockade on Jaros Two, tell him to request a room in the east wing. The west wing gets awfully hot in the afternoons.

When I saw this as teen it did not really strongly register with me. Thinking about it now, though, with the real world context of prisoners dying in cells because of heat, I find it significantly more disturbing. The Federation has the power to control the weather. Energy is cheap enough to be free. They have cells which are uncomfortably hot.

I have noticed that even among the most liberal, high minded members of society on the topic of justice, or the most anarchist-lefty abolitionists of prison, certain crimes still stoke the fires of vengeance. Hurting children or engaging in treason still stokes some serious desire for vengeance, and I would not be surprised if a degree of discomfort as applied to punishment never goes away. The more the Federation faces attack or external threats, the more the public might be swayed to making the criminals "pay"