Space Base

Your lunar headquarters since 4000 BCE.

Steven: This is the moon base. It's always been there.
Ronaldo: You have a moon base? I have so many questions! One, why didn't you tell me about your moon base? Two, take me to your moon base.

— Steven Universe, "Can't Go Back"

A Supervillain Lair — IN SPACE! For total isolation from those pesky heroes, spy organizations, and other do-gooders, there's nothing better than your very own space station. Tailor-built for the villain with a bottomless budget, the space base often doubles as a Kill Sat, Wave-Motion Gun, or some other doomsday device that can wipe cities (or even entire planets) off the map unless the governments of the world pay a hefty ransom.

A variation on the theme is the moon base; it's within blasting distance of the earth, and there's a lot of prime real estate just waiting for the evil mastermind to snap up.

In video games, the base may form the basis of a Space Zone.

See Space Station for the less elaborate and villainous variant of this trope.

Compare Elaborate Underground Base, Underwater Base, and Island Base.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• UFO Robo Grendizer (one of the Mazinger Z sequels): The lair of the Vegan invaders was a Space Base set in the Moon they used to launch their raids and strikes from. When the Emperor began his final offensive against Earth, he ordered blowing it up to show his troops they had only two choices left: conquering Earth or die.
• Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha: Precia Testarossa has her base in a different dimension. In space.
• Nurse Angel Ririka SOS: Dark Joker operates out of a weird starfish-shaped asteroid-thing that seems to be in Earth's orbit until Dewey breaks it in a fortunate accident.
• In Daimos, the main characters have the Space Daimobic, which has multiple functions of battlestar, base and mission control.
• In Tekkaman Blade, the Orbital Ring is both space base and station, served in turn by several planet-to-base elevators.
• In Moonlight Mile, "Moon Base 1" of the International Space Association is constructed with pre-positioned building materials. Then there's the American military base on the far side of the Moon.

Comic Books

• The DCU:
  • The Justice League has the JLA Satellite, orbiting Earth, both in the 1970s (the Satellite Era) and in the New 52. In the late 1990s/early 2000s, they also have the Watchtower on the moon. Their enemies the Injustice Gang had a satellite space station hangout at one time.
  • Simon Tycho, the first supervillain faced by Supergirl in her Supergirl (2011) book, had a satellite base. "Had" being the operative word; it's quickly destroyed by Kara in Last Daughter of Krypton.
  • In Superman (1939) #181, the Superman of the 25th century had an invisible fortress orbiting Earth. However, World's Finest (1941) #166 reveals he decided it was not safe enough, and moved his space base to the center of the Sun.
  • Legion of Super-Heroes has had a couple of these at different points. In the post-Zero Hour continuity, they build Outpost Allon, a space station which serves as a secondary base. Later, after the Outpost is destroyed, they build a moon-sized Space Base called Legion World to serve as their (mobile) base of operations.
• Marvel Universe:
  • The Guardians of the Galaxy are headquartered in Knowhere, the severed head of a Celestial on the literal edge of the universe. Later series like Duggan's and Cates' had them headquartered in Star-Lord's ship as their job required them to be more mobile and they no longer had access to Knowwhere's teleporter. In Ewing's run, their headquarters is on Rocket Raccoon's homeworld of Halfworld, mostly because at the time Rocket and later Gamora were patients at the facility for both medical treatments and therapy.
  • In X-Men, Magneto has the Asteroid M at first, and then Avalon.
• In All Fall Down, the Order of Despots has one of these on the moon. It's seen in first in a flashback, and is later visited in the present.
• Subverted in a Biggles comic when the space station armed with nuclear weapons to blackmail the world turns out to be an inflatable hoax.
• The headquarters of the Black Moon religion in the Black Moon Chronicles is located on the moon and accessible only via magic (the series is essentially an old Dungeons & Dragons campaign of the author's). The Big Bad sends it crashing onto the planet on his defeat, forcing the heroes to evacuate as many people as they can onto a different planet.
• In Paperinik New Adventures, the Evronians set one up on the moon. In a twist, even with the Evronians being the main enemy the base is not intended as an outpost to attack Earth but as a temporary refuge: they set it up after Xadhoom blew up their Planet Spaceship, and the base's crew set it up because they were out of energy to travel and needed a refuel from Earth before getting the hell away, negotiate peace in exchange for the refueling, and Evronians being Evronians, use the negotiations as a cover to infiltrate a changeling Super-Soldier on the planet to prepare the terrain for the invasion they were planning to launch after recovering. After getting the refuel they left, with the implication that they were destroyed during the travel.

Fan Works

• A Pink Planet: While there are multiple "Diamond Palaces" constructed all across the Earth, Pink Diamond, Steven, Pearl and Greg all live on the Moon Palace, located in the center of Moon City.
• In Hellsister Trilogy, Mordru has his palace/lair/villainous base on planet Zerox.
• In A Force of Four, Badra and her three teammates set their base up on Mars, where they and their prisoners can't be reached easily, and where Badra's patron's seat of power is located.
• Superman of 2499: The Great Confrontation: In the twenty-fifth century, the Superman family has relocated the Fortress of Solitude to the asteroid Ceres.
  The Fortress of Solitude that Superman I had maintained had long since been discovered and turned into a museum. The current Fortress was hidden within the asteroid Ceres. Turning on his flight power to hyperlight speed, Alan Kent, the 21st Superman, made the journey in minutes. Once within the great asteroid belt, with the absolute silence and cold of space about him, Alan quickly sought out the huge rock that was his destination.
• In A Dream, Valiant sets his base up on the Moon.
• In Shazam! fanfiction Here There Be Monsters, Dr. Sivana's compound is located on the middle of a Venusian jungle. It looks like "a cross between two movie genres, the science fiction epic and the gangster film."
  The meeting had gone well. Before long, he'd be ready to load up the transport rockets and send his cronies and hirelings from the soil of their Venusian base here back to Earth, with his own two brats along to coordinate things.

Film — Live-Action

• Moonraker has its climax take place in an orbital space station.
• The second Austin Powers film has a moon base, complete with moon laser.
• Star Wars: If examples where everything's in space count, then we wouldn't be complete without mentioning the Death Star, a moon-sized space base capable of blowing up whole planets.
• Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen has the Fallen's base/pad/hatchery on a moon of Saturn.
• In Iron Sky, an exiled faction of Nazis control a moonbase since leaving Earth in 1945. Meanwhile, the sequel's stinger reveals that the Soviets have an entire city on Mars with Sputnik-like ships in orbit.
• In Elysium, a few wealthy people live in luxury on a space station while everyone else lives in poverty on Earth. While those on Elysium are less moustache-twirlingly evil than most of those with villainous lairs, the film certainly portrays them as the bad guys for refusing to help despite having the technology and resources to do so.

Literature

• "The Gentle Vultures": The Hurrians establish a moon base to help observe Earth and prepare for the inevitable World War III so that they can help clean up afterwards.
• In Dragons: Lexicon Triumvirate, Drekkenoth has one on the moon, of course. It's the scene of the final showdown. Also, the dragons all ''fly'' from Earth to the moon base. In, quote, "less than five seconds".
• Robert A. Heinlein novels:
  • In Between Planets, the Earth's repressive police state government has a space station called Circum-Terra that's loaded with nuclear weapons.
  • The short story The Long Watch'' takes place in a nuclear missile base on the Moon.
  • In Rocket Ship Galileo, the protagonists discover a hidden Nazi base on the Moon after the end of World War II.

Live-Action TV

• Inverted in Gerry Anderson's Space Precinct, in which the police precinct house is a space station. Of course, this doesn't make much sense, but it's supposed to look cool.
• And there's the SHADO Moonbase in Gerry Anderson's UFO (1970), which acts as an advanced radar warning and fighter base against the eponymous Flying Saucers.
• Super Sentai and its adaptation Power Rangers:
  • The villains from Choujuu Sentai Liveman had an orbiting base, that the Livemen couldn't attack until it was brought down by Red Falcon infiltrating it in the finale.
  • Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger- Bandora's palace is on the moon, which is actually a stolen skyscraper remolded into a palace. Same naturally goes for Rita Repulsa in Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, minus the stolen skyscraper part off course.
  • The Machine Empire also resided in a palace on the moon in both Power Rangers Zeo and Chouriki Sentai Ohranger. In this case, it resembled a large factory.
  • The villains from Gekisou Sentai Carranger lived aboard the Baribarian, which was a massive space station resembling a clew of roads. The same base is also used by the villains from Power Rangers Turbo, which, in that show, bears the exact name of this trope; the Space Base.
  • During the first half of Power Rangers Dino Charge the villains resided in a large carrier ship that served as a prison for the monsters caught by the bounty hunter Sledge. The second half of the series, Dino Super Charge averts this trope, since the ship is stranded on earth due to a broken engine, thus, obviously, no longer making it a space base.
• A nonvillainous example in Kamen Rider Fourze. The protagonists can access a lunar research base (dubbed the "Rabbit Hatch") via Kengo's locker (which contains a passageway made of Cosmic Energy). It becomes the hideaway for the Kamen Rider Club which is then littered with toys, food, and other paraphernalia to suit the teenagers' needs.
• For All Mankind. In an Alternate History where the Soviets are the first to land on the Moon, the "race for the base" becomes the next point of competition between the superpowers, despite NASA scientists trying to tell the White House that a Moon base for military purposes makes little sense. Both superpowers end up with a moon base on opposite sides of Shackleton crater.

Music

• In Jonathan Coulton's song "The Future Soon", the narrator speculates about his future self working as a scientist in his space lab in space, taking on such projects as solving world hunger, curing diseases, and building his robot army to take over the world.
  • And making dolphins speak!

Video Games

• The Karma Fortress from Asura's Wrath.
• The final battle of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge has you invading Yuri's moon base after his plot to take over the world with Psychic Dominators fails. Since the mission takes place on the moon, you can't train ordinary infantry, only Rocketeers/Cosmonauts, though it's apparently easy to add life-support systems to all your tanks and other vehicles.
• In the old arcade game Captain America and the Avengers, Red Skull has a moonbase, complete with giant laser cannon.
• From the Mass Effect series, Kronos Station, home to the Illusive Man. Seen in cutscenes in Mass Effect 2 and visited during an Alliance raid in Mass Effect 3.
• Mastermind: World Conqueror has this as an option (alongside an underwater base, a skyscraper, a haunted castle...). It's easily the best in the game, since the lack of oxygen prevents vehicles from being deployed, leaving only infantry to attack. And wouldn't you know it, flamethrowers are very effective against infantry but not vehicles...
• The third stage of Nerves of Steel is inexplicably set in the villain's lunar headquarters, after having spent the first two levels fighting on earth.
• In NieR: Automata's backstory, when aliens invaded Earth in the year 5012, what remained of mankind fled to a base on the moon, and in 5204 the humans retaliated by setting up several satellite bases their army of androids could use as a launching point to retake the planet from the aliens' machine servitors. By the time of the game, - 11,945 AD and the 14th Machine War - the elite YoRHa android forces are operating out of a orbital base called the Bunker, and receiving occasional broadcasts of encouragement from the Council of Humanity on the moon. As the game goes on, not only is the Bunker destroyed, but it's revealed that humanity has actually been extinct for millennia (thanks, Nier), and the "broadcasts" from the Council of Humanity are Canned Orders over Loudspeaker from a literal Propaganda Machine made to keep the androids from learning that their creators are dead and their war is pointless.
• The Operative: No One Lives Forever had HARM's space base as one of the last levels. Since the game is largely a parody/homage of the classic Spy Fiction, it's safe to assume that that level was at least partially inspired by the Moonraker.
• The X-Nauts in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door.
• In Planetary Annihilation, it's possible to send construction units up to moons to set up your own moonbases. Among the things you can build there are engines, for when you don't want the moonbase any more.
• Makron's hollowed out asteroid at the end of Quake II.
• In Something Else, the evil guy's true base is located on the moon.
• Vohaul's asteroid base in Space Quest II: Vohaul's Revenge.
• The Third Moon in Strider.
• Super Mario Galaxy has Bowser Jr's Robot Reactor, Bowser's Star Reactor, Bowser Jr's Airship Armada, Bowser's Dark Matter Plant, Bowser Jr's Lava Reactor, and Bowser's Galaxy Reactor, while Super Mario Galaxy 2 has Bowser Jr's Fiery Flotilla, Bowser's Lava Lair, Bowser Jr's Fearsome Fleet, Bowser's Gravity Gauntlet, Bowser Jr's Boom Bunker, and Bowser's Galaxy Generator.
• Team Fortress 2 has Asteroid.

Webcomics

• In The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, Dracula has a moon base where he maintains a collection of notable humans, and "the real Paul McCartney, real Michael Jackson and Tupac make fantastic music together."
  Dracula: (glaring) Elvis doesn't do s---.
• In Narbonic, Professor Madblood sets up a base on the moon. Unsurprisingly, he doesn't get to keep it for long.

Western Animation

• KND global HQ in Codename: Kids Next Door is a treehouse base on the moon.
• Transformers: Animated: The wreckage of the Nemesis on the moon becomes a base for Starscream during season two.
• Steven Universe: Homeworld left an abandoned gem base on the Moon from their attempt at colonizing Earth. There's apparently one on a moon of every colonized/harvested planet, which is used exclusively by the Diamonds as a command center.
• Invader Zim normally operates from the Elaborate Underground Base beneath his house, but on several occasions has made use of a Space Station in Earth's orbit.

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