  We study the intrinsic structure of parametric minimal discs in metric spaces
admitting a quadratic isoperimetric inequality. We associate to each minimal
disc a compact, geodesic metric space whose geometric, topological, and
analytic properties are controlled by the isoperimetric inequality. Its
geometry can be used to control the shapes of all curves and therefore the
geometry and topology of the original metric space. The class of spaces arising
in this way as intrinsic minimal discs is a natural generalization of the class
of Ahlfors regular discs, well-studied in analysis on metric spaces.
