The Big Bang Theory writers were on stage in Ballroom 20 at San Diego Comic-Con to discuss the future of Sheldon and Amy as well as how different scenes made their way from the writers room to the screen.
The panel was moderated by Kunal Nayyar, and Mayim Bialik later joined the panel to read some steamy Koothrappali-Amy fan-fiction. The most impressive part of the panel was the diversity of the panel and the varying degrees of science and engineering backgrounds the writers have.
The best moment of the whole panel was at the end when the writers and the whole of Ballroom 20 sang Soft Kitty.
And now, some highlights…
The question of time travel
The Back to the Future scene came from the writers drawing out the argument of whether time travel is flawed or not. The writers began to write their arguments out on the board, and that is exactly what ended up in that scene. There is the whole conversation regarding the retroactive self negating past perfect which actually happened in the writers rooms courtesy of Erik Kaplan.
The broken drone
Chuck Lorre was given a drone for Christmas and couldn’t make it work. So he brought it to the The Big Bang writers thinking they would fix it but they couldn’t. When Sheldon flicks the switch on and off constantly, that was actually what Bill Prady and Saladin Patterson had done in trying to fix the drone.
Guest Stars
David Saltzburg is the science consultant who makes sure they get everything right. He created the paper that Sheldon and Leonard wrote. He was comfortable until he found out that Stephen Hawking would actually be reading the script and the paper. He then was concerned that Stephen Hawking would think his paper was terrible, but he also secretly hoped that he would think it was wonderful and write a paper on it himself. The first time Stephen Hawking came to set Wolowitz had to do the Hawking voice in front of him.
Kevin Smith was a guest last year and he called to ask if he could bring someone with him to set. When they asked who, he said Jay. Steve Molaro ran down the hall saying Silent Bob is bringing Jay and people either knew what he was talking about or looked at him like he was crazy. Mayim was so excited that she tweeted about it and got reprimanded.
Billy Bob Thornton was also on the show, and in the middle of his scene he stopped because he couldn’t believe he was actually in front of their cameras. Why was he in awe? His mom is a big fan and got him into the series.
Fan-fiction
The writers became aware of the Big Bang fan-fiction and decided to read it out loud in the writers room. From that experience they created the episode where Penny and Bernadette discover Amy’s fan-fiction and get caught up in it.The writers have taken the liberty of writing some Koothrappali Amy fan-fiction which Kunal and Mayim Bialik read aloud to the group. The fan-fic was littered with Fifty Shades of Grey references and they had to stop reading a few times because it was so funny.
Looking at next season
The answer to when Sheldon bought the ring and when he will give it to Amy will be in the first episode. We may also get some back story about Amy and her family. The writers also say that the biggest challenges are when you have the emotional moments and making sure you get them right.
Emotional honesty is another challenge for the writers. They want the characters to be honest without copying things that have already been done.
This season we will also see some Ghostbusters references. In order to get the clip from the movie for the show they had to call in a favor from Bill Murray. He called the studio directly and the show was told they could use anything they wanted.
Giving back
The Big Bang Theory has started a scholarship program for anyone entering a STEM program at UCLA. A few years ago Chuck Lorre realized people were choosing to enter the hard sciences because they were watching the show. This year there are 20 Big Bang Theory scholarship students attending UCLA.