Moonbase Two

Moonbase Two sits on the second of Cybertron's moons and is the smaller of the two Autobot lunar installations in 2005. Its crew in The Transformers: The Movie is Spike Witwicky, now an adult with a son, and Bumblebee, and their scenes are the film's only quiet moments in an otherwise relentless first act. Spike is the audience's anchor, the boy from 1984 grown up and still doing the job.

When Unicron finishes Moonbase One and turns toward them, Spike and Bumblebee do the only thing available: they rig the base to detonate, hoping the explosion will hurt or at least deter him. It does neither. Unicron consumes Moonbase Two exactly as he consumed the first, explosion and all, and swallows Spike and Bumblebee with it. Spike's last transmission, delivered as the base is torn apart, is the film's most famous piece of profanity and one of the reasons The Transformers: The Movie carried a PG rating that startled parents in 1986.

Both are later recovered from inside Unicron by Hot Rod's group during the final battle, which makes Moonbase Two the only one of the two bases whose personnel definitively survive. As a location it is barely more than a set of corridors and a control room, but it is the site of the moment G1 stopped being a children's television show, and it establishes the stakes for everything Hot Rod does afterwards.

• Spike's line as Moonbase Two is destroyed is one of two profanities in the film and a major reason for its PG rating.
• Spike and Bumblebee are the only moonbase personnel confirmed to survive, being pulled out of Unicron's interior later in the film.
• Spike is voiced by Corey Burton in the film, taking over from Frank Welker, and is written as an adult with a son, Daniel.
• Rigging the base to explode is the only tactical decision anyone makes against Unicron before the Matrix, and it accomplishes nothing, which is the point.