Tommy Westphall, portrayed by Chad Allen, is a minor character from the drama television series St. Elsewhere,

Westphall, who is autistic, played an increased role in St. Elsewheres final episode, "The Last One", one interpretation of which is that the entire St. Elsewhere storyline exists only within Westphall's imagination. The following exchange occurs:

Tommy, who is shaking a snow globe,

==Tommy Westphall universe hypothesis==<!-- please leave capitalized: this is an anchor target -->

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The Tommy Westphall universe hypothesis makes the claim that not only does St. Elsewhere take place within Tommy's mind, but so do numerous other television series which are directly and indirectly connected to St. Elsewhere through fictional crossovers and spin-offs, resulting in a large fictional universe taking place entirely within Tommy's mind. This hypothesis was originally put forward by comic book and TV writer Dwayne McDuffie in a 2002 blog post titled Six Degrees of St. Elsewhere,

In a 2003 article published on BBC News Online, St. Elsewhere writer Tom Fontana was quoted as saying "Someone did the math once... and something like 90 percent of all [American] television took place in Tommy Westphall's mind. God love him."

An example of crossover

The St. Elsewhere characters Dr. Roxanne Turner (Alfre Woodard) and Dr. Victor Ehrlich (Ed Begley Jr.) appeared on Homicide: Life on the Street. Fontana was the executive producer and showrunner for Homicide for the entirety of its seven-year run.

Proponents of the Tommy Westphall Universe argue that because of this fictional crossover, the two series exist within the same fictional universe, and within Tommy Westphall's mind because of the final episode of St. Elsewhere; by extension this hypothesis can be extended to include the science fiction program The X-Files and the Law & Order franchise (due to various crossovers with characters from Homicide, in particular Det. John Munch). Law & Order creator Dick Wolf is close friends with Fontana and frequently crossed Homicide characters over into his own series.

Objections

There are other possible interpretations of Tommy's "vision" which may suggest something other than the entire series being his dream. For instance, it may be the other way around, and the snow globe scene may itself be the dream. Brian Weatherson, then professor of philosophy at Cornell University, wrote a piece, "Six Objections to the Westphall Hypothesis", which challenges the logical, factual, and philosophical basis for the existence of the "universe".

Homages

When directing episodes for the eighth series of the revived Doctor Who in 2014, Ben Wheatley had the art department create a replica of Tommy Westphall's snowglobe, which Wheatley placed in the TARDIS set as a reference to the hypothesis.

NewsRadio episode "Daydream" (season 3 episode 7) ends with Jimmy James staring into a snow globe that appears to contain a miniature version of the WNYX office, thus seeming to indicate that Jimmy James has imagined the entire episode.

An episode of Strong Medicine shows with an autistic girl gazing into a snow globe of Rittenhouse Hospital, where the series is set.

The series finale of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert ended with a wormhole sucking up the Ed Sullivan Theater turning it into a snowglobe, in a parody of the St. Elsewhere finale.

See also

  • List of autistic fictional characters
  • Shared universe
  • Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon

References

  • Revisiting McDuffie's "Six Degrees of St. Elsewhere", a reprint of McDuffie's original blog post
  • Other arguments against the Tommy Westphall Universe
  • The Wizard of Westphall offers another discussion against the Tommy Westphall Theory