The Magic School Bus Sees Stars
Original airdate: October 25th, 1997
Subject: Stars
Focus Student(s): Keesha, Tim, Dorothy Ann
It's Dorothy Ann's birthday, and while she views the stars through her telescope the class tries to build her a present. When it breaks, however, they decide to purchase a star from television. Ms. Frizzle takes the class into space to learn about the life cycles of stars and find one that will make a good present.
Producers Segment
The male producer answers the questions about the episode from an observatory while Liz climbs up to the ceiling to stick glow-in-the-dark star-shaped stickers on it in the shape of the bus.
Tropes
- Beyond the Impossible: Even in-universe, it's acknowledged that even for a Magic School Bus that can manipulate time locally, millions of years is a bit much, to put it lightly, and yet it somehow manages to manufacture a star from the remains of the Red Giant they'd just bought.
- Birthday Episode: It's Dorothy Ann's birthday.
- The Cameo: Janet appears by phone to buy the Middle Age star for herself.
- Continuity Nod: The class sees their sun in the distance and remember that it's a star, the way they did the first time they went into space.
- Description Cut: DA describes each of the stars to Liz that she views through her telescope as the class visits each one.
- Everyone Has Standards: Horace Scope may be an Honest John specializing in stars, but he backs off of trying to sell a new star when the Frizz kids give him a lesson on how new stars are formed—and inform him that that one had been formed from the star they had just bought.
- Foreshadowing: Keesha mentions that she wants to check out the star before buying it because her grandmother bought a mop from a similar informercial and the mop didn't work. When Keesha and the class makes the purchase, the red giant immediately goes supernova.
- Honest John's Dealership: Horace Scope, who sells the class a Red Giant star that blows up shortly afterward.
- Hope Spot:
- Keesha likes the Middle Age star, how it's big and bright and under control with its planets. Then Janet purchases the star from her phone.
- The class buys the Red Giant, finally thinking that they can go back home and tell DA. Then they realize it was Too Good to Be True, and when Ms. Frizzle sends in a camera they see the star implode and go supernova.
- Meaningful Name: Horace Scope's name being derived from "Horoscope" is a two-fer. Horoscopes are based on the relative positions of stars in the sky, alluding to his job of selling stars; But the legitimacy of horoscopes at predicting anything is dubious at best, fitting Horace's business being an Honest John's Dealership.
- Rule of Three: Double-subverted. At first the class buys the Red Giant for Dorothy Ann after rejecting the Newborn Star and Janet purchases the Middle Age star. When Horace Scope tries to sell DA's star, the class expressly tells him that they bought it and made it, meaning technically the third star was Dorothy Ann's present.
- Sick Episode: The reason DA is home is because she's sick.
- Suspiciously Prescient Planning: The seller said he'd take fifty cents off the price if someone buys it in the next fifty seconds. Soon after the Magic School Bus gang complete their purchase, though, the Red Giant blows up. The class deduces that the seller must have sold the star to them extra cheap because he knew it would explode soon and later calls in to the show to confront him over this (among other things).
- A Wizard Did It: Ms. Frizzle notes that the bus is equipped to help squeeze gas and space dust together to form a new star for Dorothy Ann.
