Silversun - Production

Production

The ABC began showing Silversun on October 11, 2004 at 5:00pm daily as part of its "ABC Kids" lineup. The final episode of the first season was broadcast on December 3. Forty episodes of the program were produced, each at twenty-two minutes. The program was originally aired on the Seven Network in two groups of twenty episodes, and then shown again without a mid-way break on the ABC.

Silversun was re-run on Sunday mornings beginning April 3, 2005, until January 1, 2006. It was re-run again in 2009 each weekday at 5:00pm, finishing on September 17, 2009. The ABC has no plans to create another series of the program.

Many Silversun episodes revolved around the relationships and issues experienced by the young crew as part of adolescence. Some episodes dealt with issues of ethics and choices unique to science fiction, such as the question of whether the commander's clone should be treated as human or not, the unique human problems encountered by a crew on a lifelong voyage to the stars, and an encounter with a pulsar whose pulse cycle is in phase with the brainwaves of the crewmember Pancha, to her detriment.

Although some first season episodes are self-contained, the majority deal with multi-episode plot conflicts occurring on board the Star Runner. These included the illegal re-animation of the character Zandie by the rogue crewmember Degenhardt in the earlier episodes, the crew's encounter with a wormhole, the infection of Commander Cyriax by an alien parasite, his subsequent cure through the use of a harvest clone of him discovered in suspension among the settler pods, and the clone's accidental awakening to full consciousness. The final episode ended in a cliffhanger.