The Doors of Perception
Last time on Star Trek: Door Repair Guy:
Riker turns on Door Repair Guy, eyes ablaze with anger.
"You're working for the Borg! Goddammit, I think you are a
Borg!" He points a phaser right at our hero and fires. Door
Repair Guy hits his forearm just as the phased energy stream hits
him. He disappears in a burst of light.
"Captain, the Battle Section has broken orbit. It's heading
straight for the Dominus McGregor Nebula."
And now this week's exciting episode:
A cargo bay somewhere in the Enterprise. To the left we see
a stack of bright yellow plastic barrels. On the other side is a
small mountain of oblong blue containers. Metal racks support an
assortment of dark puce carrier pods. The camera moves along an
aisle between the racks, then turns its attention down toward the
floor. Spread-eagle between the storage racks, dressed in orange
overalls, lies the Door Repair Guy. There is a large scorch mark
in the middle of his chest.
He groans, opens one eye, and then the other. He pulls
himself up onto one elbow. He rubs his eye with the knuckles of
one fist.
"That's it. I'm on the wagon again."
He rises to his feet, using a storage rack for support. He
sways and staggers out toward the middle of the room. He puts
one hand over his shoulder, grasps the other behind his back and
turns around, stretching and surveying the room. When he
disengages his grip we see the large scorch mark in the middle of
his back. He trudges toward the big doors, which open as he
approaches, and out into the corridor.
The corridor is deserted. He wanders on and on through
various camera angles without meeting another soul. At last he
slumps against a computer panel and taps it.
"Computer, where is everybody?"
*There is nobody on board the Enterprise*
"YATI. Then who are you talking to?"
*I am talking to myself*
"Smart-ass."
He moves away, but does a slow double-take and returns to
inspect his reflection. He examines his chest, and then looking
over his shoulder, his back.
He leans against the wall and then slides into a seated
position. He stares blankly toward the floor.
"I'm dead."
After a moment a low thumping rhythm becomes audible. Door
Repair Guy pricks up his ears. He gets up and follows the sound
around a corner. It is noticeably louder. He pursues it around
another bend and finds it louder still. At last he comes to the
door from which the sound is clearly emanating. He keys in his
door repair override and the door opens.
The room inside is crowded with people. Everyone is
talking, or rather, shouting. The lighting is low, except for
banks of flashing red, blue, and green lights. Music booms.
Boogie nights!
Ain't no doubt, we are here to party.
Boogie nights!
Come on out, got to get it started.
Dance with the boogie, get down,
'Cause boogie nights are always the best in town.
"And gone to heaven!"
He struts in and the doors close behind him.
"Crawlspace: the final frontier. These are the voyages of
the Door Repair Guy. His mission: to install and maintain
proximity-activated entranceways, to stake out new rooms and new
service conduits -- to boldly go where no one with a pass key has
gone before."
[Music]
Star Trek: Door Repair Guy
Whoosh! (the Saucer Section mounted on a Borg Cube)
Starring
Door Repair Guy
as Himself
Whoosh! (the Battle Section)
Also Starring
Patrick Stewart
as Captain Jean-Luc Picard
Whoosh! (Saucer Section/Borg Cube again)
Jonathan Frakes
as Cmdr. William Riker
Michael Dorn
as Lt. Worf
LeVar Burton
as Lt. Cmdr. Geordi LaForge
Gates McFadden
as Doctor Beverly Crusher
Marina Sirtis
as Counsellor Deanna Troi
and Brent Spiner
as Lt. Cmdr. Data
The Battle Section looms into view, zigs, zags, and warps
away in a burst of light.
[Commercial: Pepsi. Shaq tears the gate off a chain-link fence,
bends the basket down and scores, and goes looking for a Pepsi.
Etc., etc.]
Around the darkened hall a convection current of figures
flow and eddy, pushing and squeezing past one another, and
greeting each other in loud, beery voices. They bump and push
and even dress a bit like the inhabitants of the overpopulated
planet in the third season Star Trek episode "The Mark of
Gideon", except that they're glad to be there and paid a cover
charge. Out of this crowd steps Door Repair Guy with a plastic
cup of beer in each hand. He is working through a problem in his
mind.
"Trans Am or Firebird?"
He chugs down one of his beers and puts the empty up-side-
down on his head. Then he stands there with his arms crossed,
taking occasional gulps from the other cup, eyeing the dancers in
the middle of the floor and getting into the tunes.
Ooo. Ooo. Ooo.
You might not ever get rich,
But let me tell you it's better than diggin' a ditch.
There ain't no tellin' who you might meet:
A movie star or maybe even an Indian chief.
Workin' at the car wash,
Workin' at the car wash, yeah . . . .
Wesley Crusher staggers up to him and stands there, swaying
and grinning happily.
"I am *so* drunk."
He disappears into the milieu. DRG frowns and rubs his
chin, trying to work out the meaning of this guest appearance.
His attention is distracted by a serious babe who squeezes past
just below his nose.
"Mmm. Granny Smith Apple shampoo."
DRG surveys the room with a seasoned eye. At the middle of
the floor dancers bump and hustle. He rapidly tallies eighty-
seven serious babes, forty-nine potential rivals and twenty-two
jealous boyfriends.
I want to rock and roll all night
And party every day!
"All right, Kiss."
He glances off to one side and jumps so that beer slops over
his beer-holding hand. Gene Simmons is standing over against the
wall, in full war paint, leather and Japanese topknot, glaring
back at him. As DRG stands gawking, Simmons raises a leather-
gloved fist and points an index finger at him, saying,
unmistakeably, despite the volume of sound in the room, "I want
you." As Door Repair Guy sinks back into the crowd, Simmons
tilts his head and extrudes a six-inch tongue.
Door Repair Guy retreats to the opposite side of the room.
He stands against the wall, beginning to panic.
"This is getting we-e-e-ird."
Fingers close on his left and right biceps.
"Yikes! Oh."
Two serious babes with blow-dried blonde hair have him.
They look into his face with worried eyes. One of them speaks.
"I am Anni. This is Britt. We are Swedes. Our sauna is
broken. Can you fix it?"
His nervousness decreases with each bat of the blonde
eyelashes. He looks from one to the other, feeling happier and
happier.
"I can fix it."
They jump for joy and draw him through the crowd and out a
door at the back of the hall.
Across the room Gene Simmons and Wesley Crusher exchange a
knowing glance.
[Commercial: Blinds of All Kinds. Shaq tears through the
Venetians in search of a Pepsi.]
A corridor in the Enterprise. Anni and Britt walk into the
shot, drawing Door Repair Guy along by the hand. They stop at a
large cargo bay door.
DRG: "This job would go a lot quicker if I had my toolbox."
Anni turns and taps the door control. The doors slide
apart, revealing a wooden coatroom. Coats and hats hang from
pegs. Sweaters and mitts lie heaped on a deacon's bench. On the
floor among several pairs of boots rests DRG's toolbox.
Britt hands DRG a hunting jacket.
"You must dress up warmly. In Sweden is winter now."
"Ok-a-a-y," says he guardedly, shrugging on the jacket.
Anni opens the far door and beckons. She steps down into a
snowy landscape. Britt follows. DRG hoists his toolbox and
follows.
Cross-country skis lean against the outside of the wooden
building. Anni and Britt take them down and deftly fit them on
their boots.
"Oh, man," says Door Repair Guy, the point gradually sinking
in. "I never skied."
"You must have," says Anni.
"Well, once. For a minute."
"Ah," says Britt, as if that explains something. She
attaches a harness around her waist. Anni hooks it to a small
sled.
"Put your toolbox on this."
He complies, and then fumbles around with the skis until he
has them reasonably on. They start off over the hills and dales
of rural Sweden. The two Swedes have obviously been skiing since
age two, but Britt is a little slowed down by the toolbox on the
sled, and Anni stops every few minutes to deliver the next part
of a running travelogue. DRG struggles along thinking that this
is not how he had planned to develop various muscular aches and
pains.
At the crest of a particularly challenging hill he shouts,
"Couldn't we just stop and have a snowball fight or something?"
Anni turns and regards him.
"You are not a very serious man. Come. Here is our
chalet."
They reach the chalet, stick their skis in a snowbank, and
tromp up the steps.
Anni and Britt run inside.
"So where's the sauna?"
"The sauna is up the hill!"
"Up the hill."
They go out the back way. DRG sees a snow-covered path
winding away between the conifers.
"Well, here we go again," he says, hoisting the toolbox once
more.
"Only you," says Anni, matter-of-factly.
"Huh?"
"Please accept the thanks of our people," says Britt.
"Uh, yeah."
He trudges away up the path, pausing once to look back.
Anni and Britt wave. He climbs on.
In a short while a small wooden building comes into sight,
nestled into the slope of the hill. Smoke curls from a chimney.
He gets to the door and gives it a yank. It resists. He
examines the latch. Nothing wrong there. He looks at the
hinges. Rust. He fishes out a can of oil and squirts it all
over the hinges, yanking the door back and forth until it begins
to cooperate and stops squeaking like a banshee. Satisfied at
last, he ducks down and steps inside, pulling the door to behind
him.
The room is warm, steamy and dark. It takes several moments
for his eyes to adjust. Gradually the idea grows on him that he
is not alone. He jumps into a fighting posture with a wrench in
one hand.
"Show yourself!" he shouts at the far corner.
A fierce familiar face appears in the dim glow above the hot
stones.
"nuqneH!"
"Krell!"
[Commercial:
A bedroom. A man in pyjamas is tossing and turning. At
last he can't take any more, and he sits up, exclaiming, "This
itching is driving me crazy!"
There is a clatter at the French doors. The curtains part.
Shaq bursts in, crying, "A Pepsi! Somebody find me a Pepsi!"]
A shot of Door Repair Guy and the old Klingon facing off
over the red glowing stones. Gradually Krell's scowl transforms
itself into a snarly smile and he begins to shake with laughter.
DRG: "DaH SwIyDenDaq lenglIj wa'DIch Dachav'a'.
(Subtitles: "Is this your first trip to Sweden?")
Krell: "nuqDaq."
("Where?")
Krell goes to the door and kicks it open. The landscape
outside the door is indisputably not Swedish.
Krell: "DopwIjDaq yIqet."
("Run at my side.")
He starts off down the slope. DRG swears, grabs his
toolbox, and chases after him. They are at the bottom of the
hill before he catches up.
Krell: "quSmey tun law' ghaj 'ejyo'."
("Starfleet has many soft chairs.")
DRG thrusts out his jaw and hits his Borg transport implant.
He rematerializes 100 metres further down the road.
"'ach Dochmey Sar lI'."
("But various useful things.")
Krell starts back in surprise, then laughs uproariously.
"majQa'. 'ach lurghvam vIghoS."
("Excellent! But I'm going this way.")
He starts off over the next hill.
DRG swears and chases after him.
They run and run through the Klingon landscape, Krell
occasionally grabbing a branch so that it will snap back just as
DRG is coming by. Klingons are very competitive runners. At
last they come to the rim of a bowl valley.
"yItu'."
("Observe.")
DRG recognizes, far below, the fortified hilltop town of
QoliqoS, ancestral seat of the DIrpoQ clan. As he leans out over
the precipice Krell grabs him by the scruff of the neck and
closes an iron grip around his forearm.
"Yikes!"
They rematerialize before the doorway of the fortified town.
Krell: "majQa'. lan DabuS 'ej pa' bIghoS."
("Excellent. You think about a place and you go there.")
DRG: "bIlugh. SeS."
("You are correct. Sheesh!" [or "Steam!"])
Krell: "QoliqoS lojmIt'a' 'oH. vatlhmey law' ben botwI'
chenlu'ta'. nov Sov lo'pu'. 'oH poSqangmoH DIrpoQ joH chu' 'ach
chay' Sovbe' ghaH. moghchugh ghaH vaj Qaw'moHlu' ghaH. Daq tIQ
lo'laH 'oH. DapoSmoHqu'.
("This is the Great Gate of QoliqoS. The lock was built
many centuries ago, using alien technology. The new Lord of
DIrpoQ does not know how to open it. If he becomes frustrated he
will have it destroyed. It is a heritage site. You must open
it.")
Door Repair Guy tilts back his baseball cap and walks up to
the door. It is built from massive timbers, with large metal
bands and rivets. The wood is scored and crisscrossed with the
marks of generations of Klingons who wanted in. The lock is a
huge piece of forged metal. A tricorder scan reveals a
sophisticated zinc-titanium alloy in which various circuits of
obscure origin are embedded. DRG scratches his scalp. He
rattles the door handle. He rises half an inch. He releases the
handle and bumps down again. He grasps the handle again and
rises again. He walks over to Krell.
"'evnagh cham lo' lojmItvam. laSvarghlIjDaq luch 'ut
Daghaj. vItagh."
("This door operates with subspace technology. You have the
necessary equipment in your factory. I'll hot-wire it.")
Krell hooks his thumbs into his belt and nods his head with
satisfaction.
"majQa'."
DRG fishes a length of copper wire out of his toolbox and
wraps one end of it around the door handle. He clamps the other
end in his teeth and hits his transport activator. He
rematerializes ten feet away, just beyond the range of the
swinging door.
Through the doorway is a corridor in the Enterprise. Red
alert sirens are wailing. Crewmembers dash by. Picard stops in
the middle of the opening and hits his commbadge.
"Number One! Stand by to abandon ship! Where the hell is
that Door Repair Guy?"
[Commercial:
A fast food joint. Two little old ladies come forward and
are handed a tray with two hamburgers. One of them takes the
tray but the other one lifts up the bun of one of the hamburgers
and scrutinizes the minuscule meat patty.
"Where's the beef?"
Shaq wanders through the shot.
"Where's the Pepsi?"]
[Bob:
"Whoa! Great episode. You can really see why they always
hire a Shakespearean actor for the main role."
"A lot of you have been phoning the station about those
satellites, you know, the Anik E satellites that went . . . well
they both went haywire this week and threw a lot of broadcasters
for a loop. By the way, if any of our viewers in the Chalk River
area are getting this, our technical guys are hard at work."
Black and white clip of Marty Feldman as Igor in _Young
Frankenstein_ flying a kite from the turret of Doctor
Frankenstein's castle in a thunderstorm.
"As you know, the Anik E1 has been recovered and is working
again. But! This just in. Actual live footage of Anik E2, as
recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope. Have we got that?"
Clip of V'ger from _Star Trek: The Motion Picture_ complete
with BOING sound effect from sound track.
"There you have it. Actual live footage . . . of the Anik
E2 satellite . . . as recorded by the . . . ah, Hubble Space
Telescope."
He trains his attention on the prop television.]
Door Repair Guy steps through the gate into the middle of
the red alert. He is buffeted by running crewmembers. Riker
spots him.
"Door Repair! Shuttlebay One! Move! Move! Move!"
DRG boots it down the corridor. He rounds a corner into the
crowded approach to the shuttlebay. An evacuation officer is
parked by the half-opened entrance, shouting, "Out! Out! Out!"
She spots DRG and shouts, "In!"
He pushes through the entrance and finds himself on the
shuttlebay deck. Sirens hoot. Emergency crews in radiation
suits haul fire equipment. The main shuttlebay door is halfway
open. DRG comes around a parked shuttlecraft and sees the cause
of the emergency: a shuttlecraft hangs half in, and half out of
the shuttlebay. Somehow the doors have descended and trapped the
craft as it made its final approach. One of the shuttle engines
is crumpled and venting coolant into space. A transporter effect
shimmers inside the shuttle as the crew is beamed out. La Forge
grabs DRG by the shoulders and shouts in his ear.
"We gotta get that shuttle outta here before she blows.
Then we gotta get that door closed or the backwash from the
antimatter explosion will clean out this whole deck."
DRG tears the cover off a manual override panel. He punches
the red emergency button and steps back to look. Nothing. He
dashes to the door track and inspects it rapidly.
"It's seized up!"
A shuttle looms up outside the shuttlebay, tilting and
manoeuvring. It fixes a blue tractor beam on the protruding
portion of the trapped shuttlecraft.
DRG yanks open an emergency storage nook beside the door and
draws out a twenty pound sledgehammer. He takes up a stance
beside the jammed track, one foot planted forward and one back so
that he is standing perpendicular to the door. He places the
sledgehammer next to his back foot. He leans to the side, takes
a firm grip, and hoists the sledgehammer in a wide rising arc.
The hammerhead arcs high above DRG's and strikes the shuttlebay
door with a resounding boom. The door wobbles visibly and the
stuck shuttlecraft scrapes noisily across the launch platform,
drawn by the tractor beam. Every heart stops as the shuttle
scrapes and jiggles slowly out into space. Suddenly it is gone
and the doors resume their interrupted descent. A cheer goes up
and Door Repair Guy removes his baseball cap and raises it in
recognition of the tribute. The huge door slides down and down
and stops abruptly, two inches from the deck. Door Repair Guy
turns and looks down at the toe of his work boot caught under the
weight of the largest door in Starfleet.
[Commercial:
A pizza delivery Volkswagen. Two guys. The radio says,
"Forget about that last delivery, guys."
"All right!"
They start to dig into the cancelled pizza.
"What do want, Coke or Pepsi?"
"What's the diff?"
Close Encounters lighting effects. The Volkswagen begins to
sway up into the sky. Suddenly Shaq breaks from the bushes. He
leaps and grabs the fender. The car disappears up into the
flying saucer with Shaq dangling below, shouting:
"Pepsi! Pepsi!"]
Shot of DRG looking down at his trapped toe. La Forge grabs
him by the arm and shouts:
"We gotta get that door closed now!"
Riker appears at his other arm.
"How can you stand that?"
DRG: "Steel toes."
Picard appears.
"Crewman, use your personal Borg transporter implant to beam
out. Do it now."
Door Repair Guy pulls himself up to his full height, picks
up the sledgehammer and says:
"No."
Various expressions of outraged authority pass over the
faces of Picard, Riker and La Forge.
"None of this adds up. You're all sigmunds of the
imagination."
Picard, Riker, La Forge, the emergency crew, the parked
shuttlecraft, the shuttlebay disappear one after the other. The
dance hall reappears, deserted and strewn with empty blue plastic
beer cups. Gene Simmons appears and approaches him.
"When did you figure it out?"
"Right at the beginning. I just went along for the ride. I
figured the alternative was being dead, so I went along with it."
Gene Simmons transmogrifies into Anni.
"You served us well," she reports. "It was completely a
matter of chance that we came across you. Your transport just at
the moment of receiving a phased energy blast created a highly
singular subspace signature. Once we sampled your mental
inventory via your Borg subspace relays, we knew we had just the
right man."
"You live entirely on a subspace level, don't you."
Anni turns into the Klingon Krell.
"Yes. We travel via certain subspace gateways, many of them
established by alien predecessors."
Krell becomes Picard.
"Occasionally we become trapped in what you might call a
cul-de-sac, a dead end. Then we need a door repair guy."
"And whenever I activated my Borg transport implant I issued
the sort of subspace command that allowed you to work your way
out of the dead end."
"Yes. But the job is not quite finished. We need one more
burst."
"And what's in it for me?"
"Mmm. We'll see what we can arrange."
Door Repair Guy looks down at his arm. He presses the
transport control. The screen whites out.
A cargo bay somewhere in the Enterprise. To the left we see
a stack of bright yellow plastic barrels. On the other side is a
small mountain of oblong blue containers. Metal racks support an
assortment of dark puce carrier pods. The camera moves along an
aisle between the racks, then turns its attention down toward the
floor. Spread-eagle between the storage racks, dressed in orange
overalls, lies the Door Repair Guy. There is a large scorch mark
in the middle of his chest.
The cargo bay doors open. Voices and footsteps approach. A
hypospray is pressed against Door Repair Guy's neck. He opens
one eye, then the other, then both. He sees, bending above him,
the shapes of Doctor Selar and the security guard Ursula.
"Will he make it?"
"These are highly unusual readings for a human."
"Riker did this. Oh, where will it end?"
"Crewman, can you speak?"
"Yup."
"Come on. Let's get him up and into the first aid station."
They lift him up and haul him towards the door.
"It was all a dream," he mutters, but then his eyes fall on
the twenty pound sledgehammer leaning by the door.
"Or was it?!"
[Music. Credits.]
--
Written by Douglas A. McLeod (ai919@freenet.carleton.ca)
--
Notes on The Doors of Perception.
"Go from one room to another opening and closing each door. Do it very slowly. Imagine opening and closing your brain when you do this." --- Yoko Ono
Episode 7 is my favourite Door Repair Guy and the one I used as a standard when judging whether subsequent episodes were any good. It's self-contained, falls neatly into chapters using the central metaphor of the show (the door), is smart and dorky in about equal measure, and develops the Door Repair Guy character. The shuttlebay hangar accident works as real Star Trek. The script plays with the meaning of the word serious just the way a Shakespeare play would.
And there's Swedish women!
The Shaq commercials parody a Pepsi campaign of the time, mixing in contemporary and classic ads for other products. Blinds of All Kinds was an Ottawa area company. I still think they had the best name.
The Anik E satellites did break down about then, which interfered with television service.
Granny Smith Apple was a shampoo scent in the Seventies.
We'll see more of Krell.
Every Star Trek episode should contain a moral (though the moral of the latest movie seems to be, "You can climb the Starfleet career ladder by sleeping round and having tantrums.") The moral of DRG episode 7 has to do with job safety. You should always wear your steel-toed boots.
The best doors are to be found in the ancient city of Khiva, Uzbekistan. I have borrowed the Great Gate of QoliqoS from this site.
The Doors of Perception is a book by Aldous Huxley about his use of mescaline. I should read that some day.
"Boogie Nights" was written by Rod Temperton and recorded by Heatwave in 1976. "Rock and Roll All Nite" was written by Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons and recorded by Kiss in 1975. Norman Whitfield wrote "Car Wash" in 1976, and it was performed by Rose Royce on the Car Wash soundtrack album.
