Cleopatra in Space: A Show That Somehow Exists
Cleopatra In Space Clearly Had Fans Rooting For It
Cleopatra in Space is baffling on every level. Someone with deep pockets or a large group of people clearly loves this idea/story/concept so much that they have thrown an inordinate number of resources at it.
The animation? Shockingly good. You can tell that the underlying technology is the same sort that a lot of shows use (The Sisters Grimm comes to mind), but someone working on Cleopatra in Space bothered to animate way more frames. Almost every scene will have some small detail—dynamic poses, hair movements, small facial reactions—that didn’t need extra attention, but the action scenes are especially impressive. I didn’t expect Cleopatra to be a gymnastic-style fighter like Kim Possible (I wouldn’t expect her to be a fighter at all), but she quickly and effectively uses anything in the environment to the point the story doesn’t even pretend she’s not supernaturally good at combat.
The Action Scenes Exceed What You Might Expect
The voice acting? Way, way better than you would expect from a random television show I’m almost sure you’ve never heard of. Everyone is doing a good job, but Cleopatra’s voice actor has range and manages to get across the core of her character (a battle-focused jock who solves problems with a deep kinetic understanding) in such a small amount of time. A lot of scenes in Cleopatra in Space actually involve Cleo being the only active character, so she needed to have a ton of personality, and, well, that somehow happened.
The worldbuilding? Cleopatra in Space actually has a decent amount, and it’s not all standard tropes. I’d grown used to shows not accounting for language when it comes to aliens, but between this and WondLa, I’m starting to suspect the science fiction writing of kids’ shows in general is on the upswing. The most interesting idea Cleopatra in Space throws out is a thing called The Blight, where a supervillain managed to destroy most historic records across the galaxy, effectively cutting off people from their own cultures, technological know-how, and so much more. This not only makes for great drama and mysteries (by episode three, we don’t know why The Blight happened) but it makes the “battle school” setting way more interesting. They learn to fight so they can recover artifacts and information despite lethal machines, not just for the sake of fighting some nebulous evil.
Cleopatra in Space Somehow Has Deep Sci-Fi Lore
And yet we’ve not come to the full extent of how baffling Cleopatra in Space is. Because the show is also an unfocused, badly paced, episodic series that rehashes some of the most generic kids’ show ideas around. Episode two is literally about Cleo getting upset because everyone is avoiding her, but then it turns out it’s because of a surprise birthday party. I’m pretty sure that happens in an episode of Hannah Montana. The jokes are often tepid, any character who isn’t Cleo is extremely one-note, and there’s a lot more potty humor than you’d expect.
Basically, the series picks and chooses where it wants to be serious or makes sense, and the second I got somewhat invested, it made the wrong choice and shattered things. Cleo should be absolutely freaked out by being on other planets, let alone some of the other concepts she’s shown adapting to instantly, but that’s discarded right away. There are several scenes where she thinks about her family and friends all being long dead, but she apparently overcomes that in a few lines at the end of episode three.
The Series Skims Or Skips A Lot Of Expected Stuff
Frankly, it’s a bit hard to even accept the truly random-feeling premise of Cleopatra in Space, let alone the niggling feeling of weirdness that is using a real-world historical figure from an actual culture for a pulpy sci-fi teenage action-comedy. At least it could’ve gone into things with a solid, developing through-line, but at least by episode three its formula is shenanigans eventually interrupted by a cool fight scene, a gentle reintroduction of some underlying plot point, and then we’re out. You could watch this series for its strong points—but Cleopatra in Space is a weird, weaker version of series that are simply better, and you should probably spend your leisure time on those shows.
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