OK, I will admit my language defense was a little off. I was trying not
to step out of the box on this one.
Stepping outside of the show, I know the he/she pronoun issue had been
heating up at the time this show was written, but I believe the use of
masculine forms as neuter or when gender was unknown/uncertain was still
widely accepted without much thought. That may say something about bias
in our own culture, but it seems unfair to penalize an author for
slipping into a common usage of his own time. Especially since the
author was dealing with a scenario in which the story was one where an
author these days could be excused for forgetting to give Meegat gender
neutral language (temporarily disregarding arguments about other gender
issues).
As for the Aztecs, it wasn't stupidity that made them mistake Cortez for
a god. It was a very detailed tradition that Cortez happened to fit with
freaky perfection. The Hawaii incident is less clear. They may or may
not have thought Cook was a god. In both cases, the groups seem to have
caught on rather fast (though not fast enough in the Aztecs case [still,
they may already have been doomed. I understand something like a third of
them died from smallpox carried by ONE of Cortez' men (although I'd have
to look that up again to be certain). Civilizations don't just bounce
back from things like that, especially when expansionist hostiles have
entered the territory]).