Moonbase One

By 2005 the Decepticons hold Cybertron completely and the Autobots have been pushed to two footholds on the planet's moons plus Autobot City on Earth. Moonbase One is the larger operation and the departure point for the shuttle run to Earth. It is from here that the shuttle carrying Ironhide, Ratchet, Prowl and Brawn sets out for Autobot City at the start of The Transformers: The Movie, and it is that shuttle Megatron's boarding party massacres, the sequence that opens the film's slaughter of the 1984 cast.

The base's own end comes later in the film. Jazz and Cliffjumper are on station when Unicron arrives in the system, and they are the ones who see him first and raise the alarm. There is nothing they can do. Unicron consumes Moonbase One whole, with both Autobots aboard, and moves straight on to the second moon. Jazz and Cliffjumper are swallowed alive, which is a notably grim fate for two of the show's most popular characters and one the film does not dwell on for even a moment.

Moonbase One matters because it is the clearest statement of how badly the Autobots are losing at the start of the film. The faction that once held Iacon is running two outposts on rocks orbiting its own conquered homeworld, and both are gone within the first act. Everything that follows, Autobot City, Prime's death, the flight to Junkion and Quintessa, happens because the Autobots no longer have anywhere to stand.

• Jazz and Cliffjumper are swallowed alive rather than killed on screen, so their deaths are technically implied rather than shown, which is why both characters returned in later fiction with minimal explanation.
• Both moonbases are destroyed within a few minutes of screen time, making Cybertron's two moons the shortest-lived locations in the film.
• The film never explains why the Autobots split their remaining forces across two undefended moon installations.
• The moonbases and the shuttle massacre together account for the removal of most of the 1984 Autobot toy line, which was the film's commercial purpose.