Golden Disk (Voyager)
| The name or term "Golden Disk" refers to more than one character or idea. For a list of other meanings, see Golden Disk (disambiguation). |
The Golden Disk from the Voyager probe is a recurring object throughout the Beast Wars. It plays a major role in the escalation of the conflict between the Maximals and the Predacons and leads to the death of Dinobot. It is eventually destroyed, but the Predacon leader, Megatron, recovers one of the shards and shows a Cybertronian government agent a piece of a message that was enscripted into it from his former boss.
| “ | A seemingly insignificant scrap of metal made by a small, fragile species hardly worth mentioning... and yet this object holds the key to the conquest of the whole of Cybertron. For over three hundred cycles, the Golden Disk has carried the mystery of incredible power under its shimmering surface. I can tell you the tales of a thousand Maximals and Predacons who have hunted this dark relic. Every story had the same ending... destruction. | ” |
—Cryotek, giving a history lesson | ||
Fiction
Beast Wars cartoon continuity
Beast Wars cartoon
Sometime within roughly a decade of when the Transformers aboard the Ark awoke in the eruption of Mount St. Hilary, the humans of planet Earth launched a primitive robotic spacecraft to study the outer planets in their solar system. Attached to this spacecraft was a gold disk which contained information about Earth. Megatron, the leader of the Decepticons, acquired it at some point and encoded an additional message on the disk.
Megatron's message ordered any Decepticons who might, in the future, come across it to use transwarp technology to travel to the past The Agenda (Part 2) and use the Teletraan I codes encoded on the disk to access the Ark while its occupants were inert and kill Optimus Prime. This, in turn, would change history so that the Decepticons could win the Great War. The Agenda (Part III)
At some point between Decepticon Megatron adding his message to the disk and the beginning of the Beast Wars, the spacecraft holding the disk—or perhaps only the disk—fell into the hands of the Transformers. It was seemingly considered a precious artifact, even though the general population of Maximals had no idea what it really was (and even some Predacons—like the reformatted Decepticon Ravage—didn't have a clue). The Maximal Elders were presumably aware of the Disk's origin.
The Predacons stole the Golden Disk; Megatron claimed that the disk held the location of a vast store of energon, with which the Predacon commander believed he could reignite the Great War against the Maximals. Beast Wars (Part 1)
Dinobot broke into the Predacon base and stole the Golden Disk. He then climbed to a high peak where he pontificated to himself about the potential power the wielder of the Golden Disk could hold, and the potential danger that came with it. On a personal level, he felt that it could either confirm or destroy his own reason for being. He needed to believe himself the master of his own fate, and if history could not be changed, then he could only believe himself a deterministic pawn. He eventually decided that the most prudent thing to do with an item of infinite power was to shove it under a large rock. Coming of the Fuzors (Part 1)
Later, he noticed that the Predacons had been setting up installations around their base in a pattern that matched the shape of one of the symbols on the disk. Realizing that Megatron still meant to alter history, Dinobot rejoined him to discover the truth of his own destiny. He led Megatron to the location of the Golden Disk and presented it to him. Shortly afterwards, Dinobot defected to the Maximals once again, but Megatron escaped with the Golden Disk. Maximal, No More
Not long afterwards, Megatron began testing history's mutability, discovering through the images contained in the disk that he had the power to alter the timeline. The Predacons attacked the valley from which humanity's ancestors would emerge, but Dinobot launched a one-man berserker attack on the Predacons, single-handedly defeating them and shattering the Golden Disk with his last bit of energy. Code of Hero
Megatron was captured by Covert Agent Ravage for violations of the Pax Cybertronia, but revealed that he still possessed a lone fragment of the Golden Disk, which contained a message encoded by the original Megatron. He played it for Ravage, convincing the former Decepticon to release the Predacon and join forces with him. The Agenda (Part 2)
Dreamwave Generation One continuity
As a Predacon and Dinobot were building up their band of rebels, they infiltrated the Vector Sigma chamber. This irked Dinobot, who didn't understand why they were wasting time "raiding an old library". But his leader was enraptured by his find: A Golden Disk filled with information on individual Autobots and Decepticons, the history of Cybertron, details about other planets, and cutting-edge technology in the early 21st century. He said it was the key to his future, and after viewing it, he declared himself "Megatron". More than Meets the Eye #8
Theft of the Golden Disk
Megatron was tasked by his mentor Cryotek to retrieve a Data-Con that would reveal the location of the Golden Disk. Megatron pulled a double-cross on Cryotek, leaving him to the Maximal Command Security Force while he uncovered the Disk's location, and went to claim it for himself. Theft of the Golden Disk
Dawn of Future's Past
Hall of Fame bios
The Hall of Records was the site of the Golden Disk's theft. Waspinator's 2011 bio
War for Cybertron Trilogy cartoon
As he was pulled back to his proper time by Unicron, Galvatron made one last attempt to change the past by giving Megatron the Golden Disk, but it disappeared as he did. Earthrise episode 5
War for Cybertron Trilogy marketing material
The Voyager Golden Disk held the power to change the universe forever. Kingdom webpage[1] It carried three destinies each for the Ark, Blackarachnia, Dinobot, Megatron, and Optimus Prme.
2021 Beast Wars comic
The Golden Disk was held at the Wheeljack Ministry of Science. The scientists managed to decode a single file, revealing the location of a planet rich with energon, before a group of Predacon separatists attacked the Ministry and stole the Disk. As part of his defecting from the Tripredacus Council, the leader of the cell, Megatron showed off the relic to the three councillors. The separatists fled aboard a a stolen warship which was engaged by the Axalon, both crafts crash landing on an another world in another time. Savage Landing Part 1
Confirming the large bounty of energon to be had, Megatron devoted himself to decrypting the remainder of the Golden Disk's files to no avail. Savage Landing Part 2
Toys & Merchandise
Timelines (2006)
- Dawn of Future's Past
- Most of the exclusive toys from BotCon 2006 come with a Golden Disk key. It is a redecoed Planet X Cyber Key. It is meant to represent the Golden Disk as it appears in "Dawn of Future's Past".
Robot Heroes (2008)
- Silverbolt vs Megatron
- Transmetal Megatron comes with the disk in his tail-claw projector device.
Masterpiece
- Dinobot (Beast Wars) (2018)
- Masterpiece Dinobot comes with the disk as an accessory.
Generations
- Autobot Ark (Titan Class, 2021)
- Hasbro ID number: WFC-K30
- Kingdom Autobot Ark comes with both the Vok and Voyager Golden Disks.
Notes
- "Fires of the Past" shows a statue of Optimus Prime holding two golden disks outside the Cybertron Archives. Neither the Optimus Prime statue nor the golden disks in its hands are mentioned in the script. However, writer Bob Skir suggested that they were either the disks from the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes, or that Optimus won them in the 2,395,989th Annual Cybertronian spelling bee.[2]
The real Golden Disk
The Golden Disk that appears in Beast Wars is based on a real object: In 1977, NASA launched two spacecraft called Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, which flew by our planetary system's four gas giants. (Jupiter and Saturn were visited by both craft, Uranus and Neptune only by Voyager 2.) The Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft which preceded them had carried copies of a plaque depicting human beings and showing the location of Earth with respect to several highly-visible pulsars. For the Voyager mission, a more sophisticated message was composed.
The "disk" consists of a cover or canister—on which a set of pictograms are found—and a phonograph record inside the canister. The record, titled "The Sounds of Earth", has a "data" portion and a sound portion. In the data portion are over a hundred encoded images including photographs of the Earth and its lifeforms, as well as drawings of human biology and reproduction. The audio portion includes sounds of natural environments on Earth, wildlife, human voices, and music. The pictograms on the record's cover explain how to play the disc and decode the images.
As portrayed in Beast Wars, the Golden Disk seems to be an amalgam of the cover and the record itself. It appears to be at least a few centimeters thick and has the cover's pictograms on one side, but the record grooves and title "The Sounds of Earth" on the other. The indication is that the cover is one-sided, and we are seeing the record through the empty rear, as later episodes would present the disc in its real-life, thin, record form.
Foreign names
- Japanese: Golden Disk (ゴールデンディスク Gōruden Disuku)
References
- ↑ Kingdom webpage
- ↑ Q&A from Bigbot's "bobskir.com" (archive copy)
