So, I'm cross-posting this from a Tron livejournal community I hang out at (because it's mostly dead now *sob*). And I'm posting it here rather than in General Discussion because it's got spoilers from the episode "Identity."

So I was rewatching episodes of Tron: Uprising the other day, and it hit me just how much the purpose of an identity disc has changed since the original Tron. I mean, the basic concepts (memory backup, upgrades, and weaponry) are the same, but the place of a disc in the programs' society is different now.

In Tron, discs weren't a requirement for anyone but the game grid warriors. Yori didn't have one, and neither did Dumont or Clu or Sark's assistants, or any of the Red Elites. It always seemed to me that the discs, while doubling as weapons, were imposed on the grid warriors by the MCP/Sark as a mark of their slavery. The "everything you do will be imprinted" was a threat, as in "I'm watching you," rather than a feature. Yes, Flynn started out with a disc and toga, but the MCP specifically brought him into the computer for the Games. The guards were there waiting for him to rezz in, after all.

In Legacy, I got a similar impression at first, only that it was more wide-spread. When Sam gets picked up by the Reco, it's because he's a "stray," a discless program. It seemed like the disc had evolved into something like identification papers where Clu had required nearly everyone to have one, because he's a control freak like that. Vint and Not-the-Games don't start out with discs either, so I had assumed they were part of the resistance somehow, that Clu was targeting discless programs because they'd most-likely be dissenters.

But then I started to wonder if the increased use of discs is Flynn's doing, rather than Clu's. Clu was created with a disc because Flynn was wearing his when he made Clu. So, unless Flynn has to keep wearing his because of his experiences in the Encom system (which seems unlikely) he chose to give himself a disc. Additionally, in the Legacy flashback, the newly-manifested ISOs don't have discs, but by Evolution they all do, and Clu hadn't taken control of things yet (Note: In Betrayal, Ophelia/Radia manifests with a full suit, so she might have a disc too; we never see her back in that scene). Maybe picking up strays is just Clu carrying out his directive because Flynn decided all the programs are supposed to have a disc. But a ton of the programs at End of Line don't have discs either, yet nobody's coming to pick them up for being strays/dissenters. I suppose they fall under Zuse's protection?

I suppose I can understand why Flynn would make discs more widespread; Flynn was given a disc in the Encom system, and Tron had one, so that's going to inform his ideas of what a proper system looks like. (You'd think he'd remember that Yori didn't have a disc, and thus that they weren't originally required, but then you'd also think that he'd remember Yori sooo...) He probably went "I wear a disc now, discs are cool." OK, not the best reasoning to require a disc, but it's Flynn, so I'm totally willing to give him Rule of Cool. Plus, having all the programs wear discs makes it easier for him, as the Creator/Master User to tweak a program's code, access their memories, upgrade their skills, etc. So there's some functionality bonuses from his point of view, even if it is a bit troublesome that he's taken a mark of oppression from the Encom system and made it somewhat of a requirement in what's supposed to be a free system.

But then there's that episode of Uprising: "Identity." In "Identity" it becomes clear that wearing a disc isn't just a rule to follow -- for those programs who have discs, they can't function without them. Beck starts to glitch and lose his memories in less than a microcycle. (Note: so far there seem to be no discless programs in Uprising or in the comic Betrayal. This seems to contradict the entry on discs in Evolution, which claims that survival without a disc is possible, but largely limited to low-functioning and obsolete programs. Which is clearly not true, unless the crowd of programs at End of Line in Legacy were all low-functioning or obsolete. Which I doubt.)

So, I guess what I'm wondering is, since there seem to be inconsistencies, how much of it is Flynn's fault and how much of it is just the result of having the story told across four different media types with so many different writers? The entry in Evolution is easy enough to ignore, because that's meta rather than in-story information, but the rest of it is definitely canon. And since that's the way the world has been built, it means that, in-story, Flynn is the one who built it that way.

Aside from the heavy Rinzler foreshadowing, it makes me wonder what the hell was Flynn thinking? Why, if throwing a disc is the primary defense mechanism, would he have set things up so that a stray program glitches that badly? Why is the disc the main memory instead of the backup? Why would he require discs if they're that problematic to begin with?

It wasn't just the serving programs at EoL though (which probably are low-functioning), it was a very large number of the club-goers as well. And, yeah, I get that it's expensive to give everyone a disc, but then why establish that everyone high-functioning needs a disc when it's not practical to film it that way -- unless they really were implying that all of those programs were low-functioning (which is another interesting thing to explore in other ways)? And if low-functioning programs don't need discs, why give them to all the Sirens? Gem and Lux are higher functioning, but the rest of the Sirens we've seen don't seem to do anything but outfit programs and start the races.

And if high-functioning programs all need discs why didn't the ISOs manifest with them (aside from, again, production expense)? Or Sam? Does Sam technically not need a disc, since he's a User? But if Users don't need them, then why does Flynn have one?

I also still want to know why Flynn made that change to the system: was it because it's easier for him, or is it just Rule of Cool?

LWSrocks2 Wrote:As for ISOs- are they technically programs in the first place? I didn't think they were considered programs, they were just considered ISOs. I dont think they use disks at all, other than a weapon. When did we see a disc-weilding ISO other than Quorra?

Every ISO in Evolution had a disc, whether or not they were a fighter.

In Identity, Beck's memory was directly tied to his disk. I think that in the TRON system, it's simpler to just assume that every program has a disk, and it was simply too expensive to produce disks for all the extras, and the producers hoped we wouldn't notice. Well, people did, and now I will. I didn't notice before...

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Yeah, that probably is the most reasonable explanation. But continuity! Why must all my favorite fandoms be so lacking in it?

Also, I love the idea that less circuits on a program means they're trying to lower their energy output to be incognito.

LORD_Z3DD Wrote:To me it seems more like flynn arranged the grid so all the programs had to use identity discs for security reasons, if think that he intented to hook up his grid with the encom server at some point , so lets asume that you are a hacker from another company triying to harm the grid, so you send programs to create chaos in the grid when you find out that not only is this grid is protected by TRON but every single program is a potential warrior unlike other servers, that would had made the grid more resistent against external attacks.

Nice idea as to the reasoning behind every program having a disk, but I prefer to think that even though we saw some programs without disks in '82, that all THOSE programs were supposed to have disks as well. Maybe they weren't as tied to them as in Uprising, so they could leave 'em somewhere for a while. Or maybe that's why Yori was all zoded out with Tron for a while. Maybe Sark took their disks to control them better.

LORD_Z3DD Wrote: KingJ.exe Wrote:[Nice idea as to the reasoning behind every program having a disk, but I prefer to think that even though we saw some programs without disks in '82, that all THOSE programs were supposed to have disks as well. Maybe they weren't as tied to them as in Uprising, so they could leave 'em somewhere for a while. Or maybe that's why Yori was all zoded out with Tron for a while. Maybe Sark took their disks to control them better. Maybe thats the reason programs in Flynns grid behave so diferently to the programs that reside in the Encom grid. In the original Tron Sark said that "everithing you do or learn will be imprinted on this disc " however (to prevent the programs from comunicating with their users I guess) Sark took away their discs and programs became zombie like creatures that only followed blindly their directives ( I guess Dumont was an exception) . Flynn however allowed every program to have an identity disc , not just warriors and with time they began to develope complex personalities to the point that by the time of Evolution Flynn said that programs now "were like people".

That is a good point. In '82, the programs didn't have a lot of personality. Most of them were like the "data pushers", just following their directive, be it their original one, or one that was "reassigned" to them by the MCP. Perhaps Dumont's disk was taken only recently.on line abortion pill misoprostol dose abortion medical abortion pill onlineabortion pills online abortion pill online purchase cytotec abortion

Now THAT... would be something to see. I would love to see the producers of TR3N try to predict in a way what would happen in the future of computers, kinda like what TRON '82 did.

LORD_Z3DD Wrote: LWSrocks2 Wrote:[ What if, as technology expands, programs became smarter/more AI-like? If the next film is set on a modern computer system, imagine the changes that would have taken place if you consider that Flynn's grid hasn't evolved since 89 Remember that flynns server is supposed to be years ahead our current tecnology, so in TR3N I would expect the programs in the encom server to have little to no personality again .

Hmmm, good point. He did come up with wifi back in '87.

I wonder if they didn't do that because the plastic disks that were made had some design differences. Now, I would have liked it, but I also think that having plastic disks made up to look exactly like the real thing and attach to the back in such a way that mimics the real thing believably would be kinda expensive too. Not as much as the actual light-up disks, but expensive. And they only had so much budget to work with.