Autobot Headquarters (the Ark interior)

Autobot Headquarters is the inside of a wreck. The Ark was badly damaged in the crash and worse in four million years of entombment, and the cartoon draws the base accordingly: broken and dead consoles in the background, and massive rocks sitting inside the hull. The Autobots did not build this base so much as move into what was left of their ship and expand outward, adding an elevator to upper levels within the volcano and a retractable door over the crater.

The nerve centre is Teletraan I, the supercomputer that scanned Earth vehicles and rebuilt the crew, and which functions as the show's exposition machine, monitor wall and plot device for two seasons. Early episodes include a small module near the main entrance serving as Ratchet's medical bay, which is quietly dropped later. Explorations by Sideswipe and Brawn open up a cave system beyond the ship's walls, which yields the dinosaur remains behind the Dinobots and, less happily, gives the Constructicons a route in from below to attack Teletraan I.

The cartoon is genuinely unclear about whether the base and the ship are the same thing. The damaged shipboard equipment says they are. But the Autobots consistently drive out through a ground-level passage below the ship, and the Ark rests at a steep angle while the interior of headquarters is drawn level throughout. Artificial gravity would explain the second problem; the likelier production answer is that headquarters is a set of remodelled caves adjacent to the hull, and nobody ever needed to decide. It all ends in 2006 when Trypticon walks through Warpath's defenders, smashes the mountainside cannons and levels the site.

• The base is called Autobot Headquarters on screen. The Ark is a comics name applied to the ship, not the base.
• Ratchet's medical module near the main entrance appears early and is quietly removed from the layout later without explanation.
• The Ark rests at a steep angle in every exterior shot, yet every interior is drawn level, an inconsistency the show never addresses.
• Autobot Headquarters remained in use in 2005 even after Autobot City took over as the primary operations centre.
• Laserbeak's habit of entering through the crater means the Decepticons had a working infiltration route for the entire first two seasons.