"The Big Bang Theory" Is Going to Dagobah

"The Big Bang Theory" is going to Dagobah. Yes, you read that correctly. In celebration of “May the Forth” the hit CBS show has come up with a special Star Wars episode. Airing May 1st, the episode titled “The Proton Transmogrification” will see the guys observing the May the Fourth holiday as Sheldon receives visions from The Force.  Bob Newhart reprises his role of Professor Proton as Sheldon’s Jedi Master.

 Sonja Flemming/CBS                                                      

The show runners were approached by Lucusfilm to help celebrate “May the Fourth”.  That surprised me a bit considering the show airs on CBS and not ABC, but I suppose they considered the Big Bang’s audience and decided it was a good fit. Industrial Light & Magic helped with recreating Dagobah for the episode as well as some of the props, so there is no doubt in my mind it will look amazing.

Lucasfilm consultants were on hand to help the production staff as the episode was being filled. Eddie Pasquarello from ILM told The Hollywood Reporter "We at ILM were very excited to do the effects for it. Everyone loves the show there and to have the tie-in to May the Fourth felt like a good synergy and marriage. We jumped at it," he tells THR. "We did talk about what the set would look like and they sent us pictures of the light saber hilt and the Dagobah set and we were impressed. We talked about the interactive lighting for the light saber and some of the ideas that were there. They did an amazing job of getting it together."

"We were approached by the Lucasfilm people to do something to celebrate Star Wars Day, which was nice," co-creator Chuck Lorre tells THR.

"We knew that Bob was coming back and Lucasfilm called us, and we realized that that this might be an opportunity to mix both stories and come up with something special" said Showrunner Steve Molaro.

Newhart will appear as one of the iconic characters from the Star Wars universe during the episode, although exactly which character he'll play is being kept under wraps. It would seem the people at CBS are not as well versed in the skill of secret keeping as Disney and Lucusfilm are. You don't need to be the world's greatest detective to figure out who Newhart will be playing.

Below is a short video showing some of the "real time" rendering that was done for the show to help speed up the production time.