The Decepticon Undersea Base

The Decepticons wake first, walk out of the volcano and immediately need somewhere to operate from. Their answer is their own crashed ship. In Divide and Conquer and the episodes around it they establish a base on the ocean floor, and the wreck is progressively rebuilt into a functioning headquarters: command deck, repair bay, energon storage and, crucially, the industrial capacity to process raw energy into energon cubes.

The undersea siting is more than atmosphere. It solves the show's basic logic problem of where an army of giant robots hides on a populated planet, it gives the Decepticons an approach vector the Autobots cannot easily cover, and it means every Decepticon plan starts with jets bursting out of the sea, which the animation reuses constantly. It also gives Megatron a throne room, and G1's Decepticons are a court as much as an army: Starscream's endless coup attempts, Soundwave's informing, the Constructicons' sycophancy all need a palace to happen in.

The base is where most of the first two seasons' Decepticon scenes take place, and it doubles as the terminus for the space bridge in several stories. It is also the site of Megatron's regular humiliations: Starscream declaring himself leader in The Ultimate Doom, the Combaticons seizing control in The Revenge of Bruticus, and the various occasions when a scheme returns home badly. By the third season it is gone along with everything else from the 1984 status quo, replaced by Trypticon and then by exile on Charr.

• The undersea base is the cartoon's practical answer to a question the comics never bother with: where do forty giant robots park.
• It is built from the wreck of the Decepticon space cruiser, the same ship Beast Wars would later name the Nemesis.
• Nearly every G1 Decepticon scheme is launched from here, and the shot of Seekers erupting from the sea is one of the most reused pieces of animation in the series.
• The base's throne room is essential to G1's characterisation of the Decepticons as a treacherous court rather than a military chain of command.