Moon Trap 1989 & The Megadungeons Of The Moon

Where to begin with Moon Trap? The movie is from 1989 & gets absolutely no respect what so ever. Its watchable & sort of enjoyable little flick. Its got a decent cast  the cast features Walter Koenig, Bruce Campbell and Leigh Lombardi .The plot goes something like this with Wiki: 

On July 20, 1969, during the last phase of the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon, a robotic eye emerges from the lunar soil and takes notice of the landing module as it takes off. The eye buries itself again.

Decades later the Space Shuttle Camelot encounters a derelict spaceship in orbit around Earth. Mission commander Colonel Jason Grant (Walter Koenig) leaves the shuttle to investigate. He discovers a reddish-brown pod and a mummified human corpse. Both things are brought back to Earth, where it is found that they originated on the Moon some fourteen thousand years ago. Shortly thereafter, while being unattended, the pod comes to life. It builds itself a cybernetic body with parts from the lab and pieces of the ancient corpse. The cyborg kills a lab technician and exchanges fire with security guards before Grant destroys it with a shotgun blast to the head.

Using the last completed Apollo rocket, Grant and fellow astronaut Ray Tanner (Bruce Campbell) go to the Moon on a search and destroy mission. They discover the ruins of an ancient human civilization. Inside, they found a woman in suspended animation who identifies herself in a rudimentary fashion as Mera (Leigh Lombardi). Mera later reveals the name of the killer cyborgs—the Kaalium. They survive the attack of a spider Kaalium and return to the landing module with Mera wearing her own spacesuit, but it turns out that the Kaalium have stolen the module. The Kaalium also shot down the command module, leaving the astronauts stranded on the Moon. Tanner is killed, Grant and Mera are taken prisoners, and the Kaalium head to Earth.

Grant frees himself and rescues Mera from certain death at the hands of a cyborg. In the meantime the Space Shuttle Intrepid is launched to intercept the approaching alien ship. Grant and Mera look for the control room and find the landing module, which has been adapted into the alien machinery. Grant supposes the module was the last piece of equipment that the Kaalium needed to complete their ship. He starts the module's self-destruct sequence and uses his gun as a rocket to get away. He and Mera exit through a breach in the hull. The ship explodes after they have reached safe distance.

Some time later they are shown as a couple living on Earth. She now speaks English and explains that she was put in stasis to warn others about the Kaalium. Grant tells her that she does not have to worry anymore, that it is over, and hugs her. Little they know that one of the pods survived the explosion and is now on a junkyard building itself a body.
   

  There was also a Caliber comic book release of the movie that I saw floating around years ago in a comic shop .50 bin.. Then I learned that there was an attempt to do a Moon trap II. Again according to Wiki: 
More than twenty years later, Robert Dyke and Tex Ragsdale launched a fundraising campaign for a Moontrap 2 graphic novel that would be adapted into a movie. According to them the purpose of the project was "to act as a presentation device to show potential backers of the hoped-for film what it's going to be about. More effective than a script alone in that it not only tells the story but shows what the film will look like."^[2] However due to lack of contributions the project was cancelled. 
If your interested in reading the comic book  of Moontrap its up on Tex Ragsdales site right : Here
 

Moon Trap as Megadungeon
 

 Was there something in the air back in the 80s & 90s that gave us cool,interesting,original movies? I don't know but I do know that Moontrap should be getting more then its share of respect for a grade B or hard C picture. Game wise there is a lot to cover here.
 We have two alien races on the Moon.
We've got Mera's people who have been mostly extinct or gone for 15,000 years because of a war with  the Kaalium. A race of alien cyborgs.. They seem to be mostly brain surrounded by biomechanical Giger technology..
 

Carcosa has exactly these sorts of folks in the form of the preserved  mummy brains of the sorcerers who serve Nyarlathotep.
 

So basically the Kaalium are space going Nyarlathotep worshiping cyborg/sorcerers!
The pods go something like this
Kaalium Brain pod  

# Appearing :1d4 

AC:9 

Move: ~
Hit Dice: 8+2
% In Lair: 100%
Treasure: Varies
These pods will act to build themselves a body out of any technology within range of their claws with 1d20 rounds they will have assembled a body as per a 3rd level science or 5th level expert.  

Kaalium Cyborg Trooper

# Appearing :1-3 

AC:8 

Move: 9/24 

Hit Dice:6 

% In Lair: 85 % 

Treasure: B 

The Kaalium are a space going menace. Worshipers of Nyarlathotep who are hostile to anyone besides their own kind. They are 3rd level wizards who exist upon the organs & technology of other races across the cosmos. They are dangerous in the extreme. However any penetrating shot to the Kaalium pod within the head of the cyborg trooper will instantly kill the monster. 
 They are armed with an electro blaster that does 1d4 points of damage to anything it hits! 

The Kaalium are a menace that could haunt the shores of Carcosa or be found within the Atomic wastelands. They're technology is at least 4 or better on the index..  

Mera's People are over 14,000 years old & may be Atlantis survivors, ancient astronauts, or a surviving colony from the future where the Kaalium are a menace. There may be thousands with preservation tanks or stasis pods.. 

They were space going & have had an ongoing conflict with the Kaalium

The movie reveals a pretech or greater race on the technology scale. Mera herself revealed a space suit that had been in storage for over 14,000 plus years! This is way beyond the capacity of anything we have today. They might be anyone you want. Personally they might be the remains of human slaves of the Inhumans from Marvel comics. Perhaps a human cult of Celestial preserved for study. The possibilities are endless.

The Public Domain Equivalent To Moon Trap 

There have been countless science fiction stories centered upon ruins on the moon. However the extensive ruins might be from the peoples of A Visit To The Moon part of the Honeymoon In Space Series.
 There are several pyramids & structures similar to what we see in Moon Trap. The plot was thus:

Honeymoon in Space saw his newly married adventurers exploring planets in different stages of geological and Darwinian evolution on an educational odyssey which drew heavily on earlier cosmic voyages by Camille Flammarion, W. S. Lach-Szyrma, and Edgar Fawcett. Its illustrations by Stanley L. Wood have proved more significant, providing the first depictions of slender, super intelligent aliens with large, bald heads — the archetype of the famousGreys^{[citation needed]} of modern science fiction. You can down load the complete story Here
The plot of Moon Trap could be applied to any of the science fantasy retroclones with ease. From a menace in Mutant Future to a twisted fantasy  setting in Labyrinth Lord.