YMMV / Space Cases

• Fridge Horror:
  • The episode in which the kids receive a warning from their future selves; the video shows them all older and still on the same ship. At worst, this means the kids will never get home and may spend the rest of their lives lost in space in the tiny ship (and what's worse Harlan isn't even in the video, so who knows what happened to him).
  • Speaking of the same future-video, there's something rather unsettling about the way Radu, Bova, and Rosie just stare into the camera making hand motions.
• Gateway Series: For a lot of kids of the 90's this series probably started their fascination with sci-fi, with at least a few feeling like they later "graduated" up to the very similar Star Trek: Voyager.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Elmira predicts in "Spung at Heart" that Catalina will disappear. Shortly afterwards, an accidental blast from Bova causes her to switch personalities with Suzee. It was just a Prophecy Twist, and it's quickly undone anyway. Flash forward to the Season 1 finale, where Catalina is presumably killed in an explosion but is really switched with Suzee.
• Narm Charm: Best summed up by this recap: "Despite the fact that the show had a budget raised from the sale of somebody's old Gremlin, and had plot holes so large you could drive a Mack truck through them, it was whimsical, fun, bright and hopeful." And that is why we love it.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Catalina was played by Jewel Staite years before Firefly and The L.A. Complex. You might say they had a lousy timeslot.
  • Suzee was played by Rebecca Herbst a year before she was cast as Elizabeth Webber on General Hospital.
• Seasonal Rot: Season 2 got this primarily for Suzee replacing Catalina and for Goddard being Demoted to Extra.
• So Bad, It's Good: Since it was 1) A Kid's Show and 2) A Cable Show, it had a laughably small budget. They used handheld video games for control consoles (functioning as "control panels" on walls), compact discs on a chair, and props kitbashed together from other Nickelodeon shows such as Are You Afraid of the Dark?, which, like this series, was also produced by CINAR (now DHX Media). All of it somehow came out on the other side of awful and ended up looking cute. Although compared to the pilot episode, the series looks cutting edge and expensive.
• Tear Jerker:
  • The end of the season 1 finale, most intense is when the airlock closes between Harlan and Catalina.
  • In "Both Sides Now", Thelma temporarily becomes organic, and loses her ability to communicate with the ship, leaving her badly depressed.