I was OK with the children when first mentioned. I mean, in Curse of the Black Spot, Henry Avery is motivated by concern for his son (and, yes, its a terrible episode, but Avery's concern frankly isn't what is dragging it down). It was when Ji-Hun appears and the whole tone of the piece is leaning into "and now there is a hero here to take charge" that my viewpoint on the way Madam Ching seemed to be somewhat lacklustre switched to thinking there was some rather lazy gendered writing going on and then that casts earlier script choices in a different light - if you see what I mean. I'm sure the writers weren't thinking "Oh she needs a man to tell her what to do and she's a woman so her motivation must be all about her children" but I also think they didn't stop to question why those two tropes so readily seemed to fit into the story and whether they were really best for the character and the story they wanted to tell.

I thought the Sea Devil characterisation was OK. They're surprisingly war-like (or at least I was surprised how war-like they were) when I saw The Sea Devils, so I'm prepared to accept that they are all about defeating the Land Parasites from the get go here. Their technology seemed way out of keeping with anything we'd seen before though.