“Invisible threads are the strongest ties”*…
Tommy Westphall was an austistic child on the TV series St Elsewhere who, it was revealed in the closing moments of the final episode of that series, had dreamt the entire run of the show.
What’s this about his Mind?
St Elsewhere has direct connections to twelve other television series – many of them direct crossovers of character to and from the series. Others make mention of specific parts of the St Elsewhere fictional universe, placing them within the same fictional sphere.
So?
If St Elsewhere exists only within Tommy Westphall’s mind, then so does every other series set within the same fictional sphere…
Explore The Tommy Westphall Universe— 419 shows (so far). A larger version of the chart above and a full list of the constituent series are available there.
* Friedrich Nietzsche
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As we wonder at the wisdom of E.M. Forster’s words, we might recall that it was in this date in 1964 that Another World premiered on NBC. Produced by Irna Phillips (who parlayed her radio experience into the first day-time soap opera on television, and who was mentor to William J. Bell, James Lipton, and the great Agnes Nixon), Another World ran through 35 seasons (8,891 episodes), until June, 1999. It was the first soap opera to talk about abortion when such subjects were taboo; the first soap opera to do a crossover (with the character of Mike Bauer from Guiding Light, another of Irna’s shows); the first to expand to one hour; the first soap to launch two spin-offs, Somerset and Texas, as well as an indirect one, Lovers and Friends (later renamed For Richer, For Poorer; and the first soap opera with a theme song to chart on the Billboard Hot 100, “(You Take Me Away To) Another World” by Crystal Gayle and Gary Morris, in 1987.
