Moonraker 5 is one of the six shuttles which carry villain Hugo Drax [Michael Lonsdale] and his 'perfect people' to his space station, there to enact his 'finely wrought dream' to wipe out Earth's population, using globes of nerve gas capable of killing 100 million people, to be replaced with his own master race. Having sabotaged Drax's plans and despatched him into space, and with the space station disintegrating around them, Bond [Roger Moore] and Holly Goodhead [Lois Chiles] try to find a way to prevent the released globes reaching Earth, Bond suggests ...Moonraker 5, that's the answer, Drax's shuttle is armed with a laser, we can track the globes and destroy them...

At the time of production, Moonraker was the most expensive Bond film to have been shot by Eon Productions with a budget of $30 million, twice as much as The Spy Who Loved Me. Although the majority of the film was shot in France, special-effects remained in the hands of Derek Meddings at Pinewood, who received an Academy Award nomination for his work.