Silversun is a science fictionchildren's television series made in Australia by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The show features the adventures of the adolescent members of the crew of the Star Runner, an interstellar spaceship carrying a cargo of 550 cryonically suspended colonists to their new home, the Silver Sun. In the year 2052, the Star Runner and its crew are two years into their 90-year journey to a livable planet 45 light years from Earth. The crew's goal is to get the "New Settlers" safely to the Silver Sun and begin a colony there. Because of the 90-year-length of the journey, the crew are mostly teenagers who will take over command of the Star Runner as the adults get older.
Cast
Main cast
Thomas Blackburne as Tane Wilson: A skilled cadet pilot.
Ryan Corr as Sheng Zammett: A brilliantly-minded cadet scientist.
Karli Dinardo as Cinnamon Everson: Steve and Karen's young daughter.
Cherise Donovan as Leonella Reiss: A cadet medical officer. Daughter of Lillian.
Angus McLaren as Degenhardt Bell: A cadet often found in the hold as the caretaker of the cryons.
Eloise Mignon as Mara Lomax: A cadet medical officer aspiring towards leadership.
Orpheus Pledger as Tycho Everson: Steve and Karen's young son.
Sarah Walker as Pancha McCaskill: Cadet computer officer of the Star Runner. Her brain implant gives her a telepathic link to the ship's computer systems.
The ABC began showing Silversun on 11 October 2004 at 5:00 pm daily as part of its children's lineup. The final episode was broadcast on 3 December 2004. 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 3 April 2005, until 1 January 2006. It was rerun again in 2009 each weekday at 5:00 pm, finishing on 17 September 2009. The ABC has no plans to create a second season of the program. Many 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.
