Fatal error: Unsupported operand types in .../sites/all/modules/ctools/views_content/views_content.module on line 26

I was about in the modules list to activate Panels 3.0-beta1 and the corresponding CTools. First I tried to activate all at once, but I got a timeout. So I tried to do it step by step. Since my site is broken I can't look up exactly which of the several module parts I was trying to activate, but I think it was something in the views 2 section of the module list (it had s.th. to do with Panels).

After trying to activate it I got this error:

Fatal error: Unsupported operand types in .../sites/all/modules/ctools/views_content/views_content.module on line 26

I looked up the mentioned line 26, it reads

    ) + $base;

the line before and after:

function views_content_menu() {
  $items = array();

  if (!module_exists('panels')) {
    $items['admin/settings/content-views'] = array(
      'title' => 'Views panes',
      'access arguments' => array('administer views content plugin'),
      'page callback' => 'drupal_get_form',
      'page arguments' => array('views_content_admin_page'),
      'description' => 'Configure Views to be used as CTools content.',
      'type' => MENU_NORMAL_ITEM,
    ) + $base;
  }

  return $items;
}

I don't have programming knowledge, so cannot figure why this doesn't work.

Any help is very much appreciated, since for the moment I cannot access my website anymore.