In the last episode's final two scenes, Donald Westphallhaving just returned to St. Eligiusis shown in Dr. Auschlander's office pondering the recent death from stroke of his colleague and mentor. With the aria
"Chi il bel sogno di Doretta" (Doretta's Beautiful Dream) from
Puccini's opera
La Rondine playing, Tommy Westphall enters the office and runs to the window, where he looks at the snow falling outside St. Eligius. The following exchange occurs: Tommy, who is shaking a
snow globe, ==Tommy Westphall universe hypothesis== 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. ==See also==