There are zero women characters in the whole of this episode, but the most important character in it is female. Also, there are no scenes aboard the Enterprise for the only time I can remember.
Silicon-based life forms are one of my favourite Sci-Fi subjects, so when I first watched this and realised that was the topic I was totally made up. At the time, I believed strongly that it was possible but later that it was very unlikely to happen. I have made a YouTube video about this which I can’t link to owing to the fact I’m typing this on a minitablet, but the gist of it is that silicon-based life is possible but would have to be carefully designed and placed in a specially-designed environment, and a mixture of organic and silicon-based biochemistry would also work but would have to have a core of carbon-based processes going on. Watch the video if you want more.
The Enterprise is summoned to a mining facility on Janos VI where men are being killed and dissolved by a mysterious monster only seen just before it kills them. The crew beam down and Spock suggests the antagonist is a silicon-based life form. On readjusting the trickiest they are able to detect it and it turns out to be a very definitely alien and intelligent being called the Horta, who is laying eggs all over the place, moves through solid rock using a powerful acid and is killing the humans because they’re destroying her eggs. Her species can only survive if they let her reproduce and the initially hostile miners mellow when they realise she can make valuable metals available by boring holes easily.
This is of course the “monstrous feminine” as in Ridley Scott’s Alien. For all we know, she doesn’t need a mate, so there’s male anxiety at being rendered unnecessary for reproduction. Moreover, she’s roaming about the place killing all the males. This makes it particularly interesting that only a Vulcan can contact her. I’m getting the impression that Spock is kind of representative of the female in some odd way I can’t yet put my finger on. She finds humans hideous just as we find her hideous, so this is in a sense a lesbian mother – she doesn’t fancy men. In fact the only person she finds slightly less hideous is the non-man Spock. She never gets to meet a woman.
This is quite a straightforward story and McCoy is as sceptical about the possibility of silicon-based life as I am, particularly silicon-based life which can survive in an oxygen atmosphere.
So, the whole thing is notable in three ways: there is a markedly female character who is not a sex object for any of the others; there are no scenes aboard the Enterprise ; there is a firm hard SF basis to it. Also, I think we see hydrofluoric acid in use over four decades before Breaking Bad and it’s a chemistry-based episode. And, there are no women in it at all!
A Box Of Chocolates 