The name or term "Golden Disk" refers to more than one character or idea. For a list of other meanings, see Golden Disk (disambiguation).

DJ Meggy spins the hits.

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

Sometime within roughly a decade of when the Transformers aboard the Ark awoke in the eruption of Mount St. Hilary (possibly earlier, possibly later), 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 was even more of a "message in a bottle" than the disk itself, although the complete message was never revealed. He orders any Decepticons who might, in the future, come across the message to use transwarp technology to achieve some particular end. The Agenda (Part 2)

Exactly what end is unrevealed because the disk was destroyed before the message was ever played on-camera. Predacon Megatron plays only a surviving fragment of the message for Ravage . Presumably, the rest of the message indicates the location of the Ark and asks the descendants of the Decepticons to use transwarp technology to travel through time, gain access to the Ark using codes to Teletraan I encoded on the disk, and change history by killing Optimus Prime , the leader of the Autobots , before he can defeat Megatron and win the Great War

a copy copies. A giant statue outside the archives where it was stored includescopies.

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)

actually talked till I'm blue in the face." "Well look at that. I'vetalked till I'm blue in the face."

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 and join forces with him. The Agenda (Part 2)

Dreamwave Generation One continuity

"With this little bauble I will write a new chapter in the history of.. Wait, this isn't.. DAMN YOU, JOE NG!"

As Megatron (who had not yet taken that name) and Dinobot (who, strangely, had) 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 Megatron 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

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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

Toys / Merchandise

Timelines (2006)

Golden Cyber Disk Key Power!

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.

Notes

In More than Meets the Eye, the Voyager Disk is mistakenly drawn as the Vok Disk.

The real Golden Disk

Ow -8 *..

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