A cousin trope to Shoot Out the Lock: In speculative fiction, when you want the door to close and stay that way for a while, you weld it shut with a laser or similar device.
For using a laser to make a door, see Laser Cutter.
Examples:
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Comic Books
- In Batman: Death by Design, Exacto power-welds the door of a crane shut, sealing Batman, a journalist and a union boss inside just minutes before an explosion is due to send the crane toppling from the roof.
- Deadpool once does this to a door to keep his sort-of girlfriend Siryn out of the room while he tries to kill the doctor who gave him his powers. Unfortunately, a melted lock isn't much use against a Super-Scream.
Fan Works
- Here Comes the New Boss: To keep her costume secret from her dad, Taylor uses Stoneknapper's power to reshape the concrete and entirely seal off her alcove under the house.
I'd thought for a long time how I was going to hide my work from Dad, until Stoneknapper had shown me that the best kind of lock is one that only exists for you.
- The Palaververse: In Treasures, when Daring needs to stop her pursuers, she welds the hinges of a trapdoor to keep it from opening:
That wouldn't be enough, though, and she glanced around for its hinges, found them, and lurched over as she fumbled a multitool out of her saddlebags. She yanked out the blowtorch attachment, making her much-abused teeth ache anew, and laid it down upon the hinges before pressed down on the button that made the little magical flame shoot out from the side.
It was dicey work, quickly passing it over the hinges to get them properly melted and beyond any hope of raising,
Film — Animated
- Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths: Alexander Luthor welds a vault door to slow down the Crime Syndicate.
Luthor: Run. That's not going to slow them down for long.
[Angelique slices through the vault door with her Laser Blade]
Jester: That's not gonna slow them down at all... - Treasure Planet: Captain Amelia welds the lock on a hatch in order to keep out the rampaging pirates.
Film — Live-Action
- In Aliens, the team welds the doors leading to Operations shut to keep out the Aliens. They come in through the ceiling instead.
- Used in the beginning of Galaxy of Terror by a fleeing crewman.
- Crosby Franklin rings up the Hotel Artemis and insists that a room be reserved for his father who needs urgent medical attention. The Nurse explains that they have a first-come-first-served arrangement, so Crosby turns up with an advance party of minions who weld shut every door so no one else can get enter the hotel. There is however a secret entrance they don't know about.
- Star Trek:
- In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Kirk uses a phaser to melt the lock on a door he locked some 20th-century medical staff in. The staff inside are a little surprised at the rather blatant breaking of the Prime Directive, even by the standards of a captain well known for playing fast and loose with said directive. Incidentally, this is the only time we see weapons used in the entire film.
- In Star Trek: Nemesis, Picard seals the door to the shuttlebay, but discovers that that door is the only way out.
- In Star Wars, this is usually achieved by the simple step of "Apply lightsaber to control panel. Repeat as necessary." This backfires in A New Hope, when Luke shoots out a door control panel to hold off pursuing Stormtroopers, but the controls he just destroyed were also supposed to extend the bridge he needed to cross. Which begs the question of why there would be a retractable bridge over a bottomless chasm in a corridor inside a giant space station in the first place.
Literature
- A non-sci-fi example is mentioned in The Day of the Jackal. To prevent themselves from being kidnapped by the French Action Service, the OAS leaders rent the top floors of a hotel in Rome and weld shut the lift doors on all but one floor, which is guarded by their men.
- Joe Pickett: In Stone Cold, Nate uses an industrial strength epoxy to seal the doors and windows of the guesthouse where the bodyguards of his target are sleeping: an act described as 'figuratively welding the lock'.
- The Murderbot Diaries: In Exit Strategy, a hostile spaceship hacks the gunship Murderbot is on and tries to open the airlocks. Murderbot counterhacks the system and raises the temperature on the door locks to fuse them shut.
Live-Action TV
- Alien: Earth
- In "Neverland", cyborg security officer Morrow is in the ship's computer room when Captain Zaveri starts hammering on the hatch because there's a xenomorph chasing her. Morrow extends a tube from his arm and moves to the hatch...and proceeds to weld it shut, leaving his shipmate at the mercy of the xenomorph.
- In "In Space No-one", it's shown that shortly before this Zaveri tried to escape the xenomorph by welding shut the door to the Bridge. Unfortunately she didn't realise there was another alien monster already on the Bridge, a Puppeteer Parasite that had taken over one of her crewmembers.
- Babylon 5: Garibaldi and the Mars Resistance blow the lock on an Earthforce outpost (depressurising it to immobilise those inside) then weld it shut again. They might have just been repairing the damage however, because someone walks through the door later on.
- Doctor Who. In "The Wheel in Space", the Doctor and Jamie explore a seemingly abandoned spacecraft, but there's a robot on board that welds the door so they can't get back to the TARDIS.
- Done just for the cool factor in The Dukes of Hazzard: the doors of General Lee are welded shut, driver and passenger systematically use the always-open windows.
- Firefly. In her introductory episode, Saffron uses some sort of heating strip thing to weld shut the door to the cockpit, to prevent the crew from changing the spaceship's course.
- In Killjoys, there is a type of Abnormal Ammo that can "bolt" a door shut.
- In Space: 1999, a mind-controlled crewman welds shut the door of a nuclear waste storage silo, to buy time for rigging it to explode.
- Stargate SG-1:
- Stargate Command does this with the Stargate iris on a few occasions. The first time, it's done to the Beta gate after it's stolen and used to steal from friendly worlds. The second is to their own gate to prevent any dial-ins completely while they try to extract Teal'c from the buffer.
- In another instance, an alien program that enters the base computers through the Stargate takes refuge in the MALP room and welds the door shut so it can work in peace. By the time the base personnel manage to cut their way in, it has built a device to transfer itself into the first person who examines the equipment.
Tabletop Games
- d20 Modern has rules for doing this with thermite.
Video Games
- Several of the Alien tie-in games, including Aliens: Infestation and Aliens: Colonial Marines, have lock-welding as a gameplay mechanic.
- In Alien Swarm, you can do this to close or open doors.
- Shows up a couple of times in Batman: Arkham City, forcing Batman to find a different route.
- Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth: Cutter Urania's ship engineer, Roy Baker, wants to seal off doors to keep the deep ones away. Specifically, he waits for Jack to get out on deck before welding the main door shut, only for another deep one to sneak up from behind.
- Dead Rising: When you and a few survivors first barricade yourselves in the Security Room, Otis welds the entrance door shut. Oddly, when the army shows up, the door becomes un-welded (not destroyed) with no explanation.
- The Force Unleashed: During your breakout from the Empirical, a cutscene shows a purge trooper welding shut a door through which you have to go. You also have to go through the purge trooper and two EVO troopers.
- A tool that is available to all perks in Killing Floor is the welder, it helps with defense by closing entry ways allowing the Zeds to be funneled into another entryway. This can also just slow down zeds as they have to spend a lot of time knocking down the door as you make your escape, however if the durability reaches zero the welded door will be destroyed. Previously welded doors can also be unwelded just in case if you need to escape or open up another path. The Support perk has stats that help with how fast they can weld and unweld doors, alongside that welding is also another good way to gain experience for the perk. ("I told you, I am WELDING this DOAH!") It makes a return in the sequel Killing Floor 2 with Support not only being able to repair destroyed doors, but a trait exclusive to the Demolitionist perk, is that the doors they weld shut are booby-trapped to explode once destroyed (originally it was a perk skill but was turned into innate ability).
- Max Payne 1: In the second level of the game, the Rosco Street Subway, Max finds himself in a section of the New York subway that's been closed off since the 1940s (which is why a group of bank robbers are using it to tunnel their way into a bank vault on the other side), and the only door that leads back to the modern subway has been welded shut for decades. After dealing with the robbers, Max uses their explosives to blast his way through.
- Space Station 13: In recent times, this has been abandoned in favor of cutting the wires, but let it be known that welding an airlock shut was in the game first. Also, if you want to be nasty, it's possible to put people into lockers, then weld them in, preventing any escape without somebody else unwelding the locker.
Web Originals
- In the MSPA Fan Adventure Divine Intervention, Zoey's dad shoos her in her room and attempts to welds the lock. He only succeeds at burning the door down, so he drops a safe door in its place.
Western Animation
- Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: Mirra does this in the pilot when the group are being chased by Zurg's mind-controlled Space Rangers.
- DuckTales (1987): In "Where No Duck Has Gone Before", Launchpad squirts custard from the food synthesizer on the lock to the transporter room door to make sure the Kronks can't open it. This works until they begin burning through the door.
- Kid vs. Kat: Kat does this several times to the Kat Kommander's rebellious son in "Rebel with a Claw"; once to seal him in a room to get him out of the way, and later to seal him in his transport module before they launch him back into space.
- The SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Squid's Day Off" has Squidward lock himself in his own home, barricade the front door and weld the lock to prevent himself from running back to the Krusty Krab so make sure SpongeBob hasn't destroyed it yet and force himself to enjoy his shirking work for the day. Of course, it fails, and he plows through the barricade in an instant to run back to the (perfectly fine) Krusty Krab... and of course, it turns out that they forgot to put up the "Open" sign, so nothing would have happened anyway.
- Star Wars Rebels: In "Vision of Hope", the Ghost crew duck into the Dilating Door of a sewer tunnel, but then stormtroopers come along and weld it shut. Chopper tries to use his saw to remove the weld, but has made no progress when Kanan uses his lightsaber to cut the door open from below, nearly stabbing the droid in the progress. Chopper is not happy.
- The pilot of Teen Titans (2003) shows Starfire welding the door shut to keep out Mammoth. It doesn't hold long.
