Phineas and Ferb have found that their dad has purchased them a certificate making them the owners of their very own star. Striking inspiration, the boys build a spaceship to travel to their star. Candace, who's worried about asking Jeremy to the Falling Stars Girls'-Choice Dance, accidentally comes along as well. Perry takes advantage of the situation as Dr. Doof's latest plan turns out to be in outer space. The family car comes along for the ride as well.
This Episode contains tropes of:
- 2D Visuals, 3D Effects: The visuals on this otherwise traditionally animated episode uses a lot of 3D, including but not limited to: the rockets, the asteroids, and Doofenshmirtz's space station robot.
- Ad-Break Double-Take: Candace asks Phineas what the white light is, and he doesn't know.
- An Aesop: Don't let fear rule your life.
- Artistic License – Physics: When the rocket's battery runs out as the three of them are flying back to Earth, the rocket immediately stops moving. Since space is a mostly empty vacuum, even if the rocket isn't powered, they should retain their momentum since there's no air friction to slow them down.
- Asteroid Thicket: The boys and Candace have to fly through one of these.Candace: Uh, guys? What are all these red flashing things heading toward my rocket?
Phineas: Yeah, those are asteroids.
Candace: ASTEROIDS?! - Bait-and-Switch:
- Isabella says that she has found a massive power source in Phineas and Ferb's vicinity. Doofenshmirtz's giant robot appears behind the ship until Phineas sees that it is Linda's car.
- Lawrence gives the pizza delivery guy his very own star as a tip. He is not very impressed because "Uptown, they give quasars!"
- Batman Can Breathe in Space: When visiting their star, Phineas and Ferb do not wear their space helmets when they enter; Candace is even able to handle its atmosphere with her normal clothes. Justified in that, according to Phineas, Ferb said the air on the star is just like Earth.
- Bigger on the Inside: The mission control building. Outside, it looks like a tiny shack, but inside, it looks like a full-fledged mission control center.
- Blatant Lies: When the bouncer to the milkshake bar doesn't let Candace in, she says "I'm their sister", and he apologizes and lets her in. Another alien, despite having a male voice (and not being human) tries to get in by saying "I'm their sister".
- Blinded by the Light: Phineas, Ferb, and Candace come across a big, shining light; Candace asks Phineas what it is, and he doesn't know. note
- Bouncer: A tough alien acts as the bouncer to Phineas and Ferb's shooting star milkshake bar, and even stops Candace from entering, claiming they don't take kindly to gatecrashers. But he changes his tune once he finds out she's their sister, and lets her in.Alien in line: Um, I'm their sister.
- Call-Back: To "Rollercoaster" when a satellite actually does crash near the house.
- Comedic Underwear Exposure: In the song "Let's Take a Rocketship to Space", both Phineas and Ferb end up with their clothes blown off, leaving them in just their undies, when their second rocket explodes.
- Daydream Surprise: Candace asks Jeremy to the dance, and he not only turns her down, but he and everyone in the food court laugh at her, then everyone in the mall, then everyone in Danville. Then the Earth explodes, and we see it was just Candace describing her "worst-case scenario" to Stacy (and later Isabella).
- Does This Make Me Look Fat?: When Candace gets oxygen pumped into her space suit, she asks, "Does this space suit make my butt look big?", to which Phineas replies, "Yes. Yes, it does", and decides to move the oxygen into her gloves, which makes Doof believe that Huge Hands Hans is in space.
- Drunk on Milk: In a brief gag, apparently, milkshakes are able to make aliens feel intoxicated, as one attempts to come onto another alien and slur, "I love you, man", before being punched in the face.
- E = MC Hammer: Played with; they use a whiteboard featuring a real-life equation used to create rockets (see Shown Their Work), with one significant error that causes their prototypes to explode. Phineas and Ferb keep adjusting the calculations and eventually realize that they shouldn't be using the square root of a bomb, so they replace it with a smiley face.
- Evil Is Petty: Doof is in space because he has held a longtime grudge against Huge Hands Hans who would one-up him in shadow puppetry, even though he wasn't very good at it, so he decides to use his giant robot to make giant shadow puppets on the moon.
- Explosive Decompression: Downplayed. Not wearing a space suit when in outer space just causes swelling.
- Failed a Spot Check:
- When Isabella tells Phineas and Ferb that she's detecting a massive power source in the area, Doofenshmirtz's Inator shows up right behind them. They miss it though, and instead notice Linda's car. note
- At the end, Linda sees her car in the driveway and decides to back it in, not even taking notice that the front bonnet was open.
- Failure Montage: One of these is used to show that the boys' first attempts at building a rocket are less than successful.
- Flapping Cheeks: It happens first to Phineas as he's training on a makeshift centrifuge (actually a merry-go-round spun at high speed by Buford), and later to Candace once she finds herself on board of a starting rocket (she complains that she can't hear anything because the flopping cheeks are covering her ears).
- Great Big Book of Everything: "Okay, girls, turn to the 'Giant Robot' section of your Fireside Girls manual."
- Impossible Shadow Puppets: Doof is able to make a rabbit with his hands, but he is somehow also able to make him eat a carrot.
- Kissing the Ground: Candace after they finally make it back to Earth.
- Left the Background Music On: One scene of the rocket building montage shows the kids performing the instrumental parts to the song playing in the background, with the Fireside Girls playing strings and Ferb playing the harp.
- Loophole Abuse: According to Phineas, the boys are too young to legally start a car. They get around this by using a remote to start Linda's car.
- Meaningful Echo: At the beginning of the episode, Candace says "I'm not gonna let fear rule my life" before asking Jeremy to the dance, only for her to flake out and not do it. At the end, after Phineas tells her she's brave, Candace says "I'm not gonna let fear rule my life anymore". This time, she means it.
- Medium-Shift Gag: The above mentioned Failure Montage uses Stock Footage of abortive shuttle launches from the 1960s and 1970s.
- Mistaken for Profound: After Candace helps the two-headed alien ask his girlfriend (the other head) out for a date, Phineas goes "So... Candace?". Candace assumes he's trying to teach her a lesson about asking Jeremy out and walks off. Turns out Phineas just wanted to know if she liked the milkshake he gave her.
- Mistaken Identity:
- Candace's suit is pumped with too much air, which goes towards Candace's gloves, making them appear larger. When she steps outside to jumpstart the rocket, Doofenshmirtz notices what's going on and mistakes her for his old romantic rival, Huge Hands Hans.
- Stellar object variant: the "star" Lawrence bought for the boys turns out to be an asteroid that hosts a milkshake bar with a really bright neon sign.
- Multiple Head Case: One of the aliens in the Milkshake Bar has trouble asking a girl to a dance later that night; Candace convinces him to do it. It turns out that he's a two-headed alien, and the girl he wanted to ask was the other head.
- Out of Character: When Phineas tells Candace that she was brave, he says "Ferb was going on and on about it". Ferb's reaction is not shown in the episode, so the audience will have to take Phineas' word for it.
- Parking Problems: Linda's car gets stuck in the loading zone of a space station just as a fleet of astronauts are preparing to dock. Eventually, the astronauts move it, but immediately afterwards, an alien parks its spaceship in the exact same spot.Astronaut: Oh, it's bad enough this happens on Earth, now space?!?
- Precocious Crush: This episode marks the first time Isabella makes an actual, unambiguous attempt at trying to ask out Phineas, instead of hanging out nearby just to be near him. In this case she tries multiple times to ask Phineas to go to Falling Stars Girls'-Choice Dance with her, which, after multiple interruptions, he accepts in the end, but he brings along Ferb, much to her initial confusion. This also kickstarts Phineas being Oblivious to Love (well, Isabella's love anyway).
- Poor Communication Kills: Isabella keeps trying to ask Phineas to the Night of the Falling Stars Girl's Choice Dance, but she keeps getting interrupted.
- Record Needle Scratch:
- When Isabella interrupts Phineas and Ferb's Team Power Walk.
- When Phineas and Ferb introduce themselves to the aliens in the Milkshake Bar.
- Running Gag:
- The usual "aren't you a little young to X" gag is averted in both directions. Phineas points out that, legally-speaking, he and Ferb are too young to start/drive a car, and Ferb deconstructs it.
- Isabella tries to ask Phineas to the dance, but he is led away by something else.
- Shout-Out:
- Phineas and Ferb's dramatic slow motion walk is a tribute to a similar shot in Armageddon.
- Perry is frozen again, this time in the ice tray the same way Han Solo is in The Empire Strikes Back.
- "Just like Beggar's canyon back home."
- "Danville, we have a problem."
- Shown Their Work: The equation that Phineas and Ferb keep adjusting during the Failure Montage is an actual equation known as the Tsiolkovsky Rocket Equation (excluding the square root of a bomb/smiley face).
- Space Episode: The first of several in the series. In fact, this episode pretty much crosses off the "Building a rocket..." part of the theme song.
- Spanner in the Works: Unsurprisingly for this episode, Linda, as she is the one who moves the car, but its engine is still connected to the rocket, causing it to blast off with mission control.
- Stealth Pun: The song "Shooting Star Milkshake Bar" has the phrase "shake, shake, shake your asteroid" note
- Stock Audio Clip: The same voice clip of Isabella's meek "Sure, no prob" is used three times throughout the episode.
- Stock Footage: The Failure Montage of Phineas and Ferb's attempts to get a spaceship off the ground are all live-action clips of real rockets failing to get airborne and exploding.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: When the rocket runs out of battery, they need a jumpstart from the car. Candace is chosen to go to the car, since she has her learner's permit. She asks why they can't just manufacture a battery, leading to this.Candace: "What? Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Can't you guys just find some old nuts and bolts lying around and Jerry-rig up some kind of machiney-deely-bob and get us out of this situation?"
- Take My Hand!: Played with. When the first rocket gets damaged, Phineas tells Candace to put on her spacesuit and go for a space walk towards their ship. She panics, and Phineas tells her, "Just calm down and take Ferb's hand". The camera cuts to Ferb, who is standing right beside her and is already holding her hand as he drags her out of the rocket.
- Team Power Walk: Done by Phineas and Ferb when they get ready to enter the rocket. Lampshaded by Isabella:Isabella: Why are you guys walking so slow?
Phineas: Dramatic effect. - Vocal Dissonance: Gretchen, one of the Fireside Girls, uses a deep male voice for the rocket's countdown. She goes back to normal once she clears her throat.
- What Does This Button Do?: Once the launch ends, Candace starts hitting every single button in the rocket randomly, ironically preventing her from hearing Phineas telling her not to do that. Oddly enough, this was done out of panic instead of curiosity.
