On his parents' wedding anniversary, Jules surprises them with a spectacular present — two tickets for the McFly space cruiser Marty far in the future. However, Jules' newest invention shows him and Verne a news story that the ship will be lost in space with all hands. The Brown family scrambles to prevent this future and be reunited.
Tropes:
- Casual Interplanetary Travel: In the future, you can go on a cruise to Mars.
- Celebrity Impersonator: One of the entertainers on the ship is a man called "Jimmy", who is hired to copy Marty's act.
- Continuity Nod:
- The episode opens with Doc and Clara looking through a telescope and reminiscing about the first time they did this.
- Ziff Tannen mentions "Grampa Griff", who appeared in Back to the Future Part II, and ends up falling into his jail cell during a botched escape attempt.
- Description Cut: Clara declares the trip a complete romantic success, enjoying being alone with her husband and the stars. She comments that the only thing missing is soft music. Cue the sound of a rock song blaring from the next room.
- Falling into Jail: Ziff is outed for his Vehicular Sabotage, fails his escape due to grabbing a jetpack upside-down, and lands in his grandfather Griff's jail cell. Griff calls him "butthead" and snarks about him messing up.
- Family Theme Naming:
- The Tannen who sabotages the Marty is called Ziff, continuing the tradition from Biff and Griff.
- Presumably Marta McFly is named in reference to her great-grandfather Marty.
- Formula-Breaking Episode: The episode is largely set in the future (2091 specifically), whereas other episodes only traveled to the past.
- Hold Your Hippogriffs:
- Clara asks Marty (actually an Celebrity Impersonator), "How off the Earth did you get here?"
- Jules bets "standard American currency to circular baked goods " that Ziff sabotaged the ship.
- Meaningful Echo: At the beginning, Verne presents his parents with a crude portrait of them for their anniversary, which naturally gets dwarfed by Jules' gift. Doc reassures his younger son that the thought behind the present is what matters. Ultimately, Jules' gift winds up causing a lot of trouble and grief. When Jules apologizes for almost getting her and Doc killed, Clara repeats the earlier words.
- Ridiculously Successful Future Self: Jimmy, the ship's entertainer, impersonates Marty and his musical style (ala many musicians with Elvis), and Marta wistfully wishes her ancestor could be here to see the ongoing success of his work, clearly indicating Marty does make it big as a rock musician one day.
- Shout-Out: Verne tries telling someone that their parents are going to be lost in space. He responds, "An unlikely scenario, but a good idea for a television program."
- Solar Sail: As you can guess from the title, both spaceships have them.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: When the captain of the ship, Marta, gets a frantic call about Ziff's sabotage from the bridge, she tells everyone to relax and not worry. "It's not like we're gonna crash or anything."
- Tear Off Your Face: Doc and Clara see a musician who looks like Marty and go over to talk to him. "Marty" pulls off his face, revealing himself to be an actor (who is actually not very happy about the role or the Loony Fans who apparently come with it.)
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Jules just intended to give his parents a spectacular anniversary present. Instead, he wound up almost getting them killed.
- We Need a Distraction: Marta gets nervous about how to keep the guests from panicking when she's called away to deal with the sabotage. Marty impersonator Jimmy offers to do another song to keep them distracted while she tries to deal with it.
