Outernauts: Western Pokémon, or fresh new IP?

Leanne C. Taylor-Giles writes: The way that Outernauts has been described to me, almost without fail, is as “Pokémon in space”. I signed up after plentiful urging and decided to see whether putting magical creatures that live in tiny balls in a setting as unbelievable as space would make any difference to the core concept.