It was with a certain amount of renewed vigour that Doug Naylor pulled his team back together for Red Dwarf VIII.

Chris Barrie, who had seemingly walked away from the series, so enjoyed his brief time on VII that he was keen to return. Norman Lovett came back to pick up the role of Holly. Director Ed Bye was on board. The studio audience was reintroduced. And there was the promise of a Red Dwarf film.

The old magic had returned - and the entire team knew it.

One part of the crew not coming back for the eighth series was BBC Vis-FX. Amazingly, the model guys had become too expensive even for a BBC production. Instead, model work was turned over to Jim Francis and his team at Special FX GB, a crew who were old BBC hands from way back (Jim had worked on the Hitchhikers Guide TV series, and model-maker Bill Pearson had worked for Mel Bibby on Dwarf's production design). CGI and space effects, meanwhile, were created by Chris Veale - the one-man effects house who continued to work from his bedroom.

Doug made a point of taking back control this series - originating storylines himself, and only farming a little material out to Paul Alexander, Script Associate and the only writer from VII to return at all for this new vision of the show. The crew were coming back from the dead. Our boys were to be placed in prison. And there was a 'Dirty Dozen in space' idea Doug wanted to try out.

Recorded between September and November 1998 and shown from February the following year, Red Dwarf VIII was - unbeknownst to anyone - the final series of the SF comedy to be made and broadcast at the BBC. After 52 shows the programme ended with high hopes of a movie to be made soon after - but although the following decade saw the project at the 'almost green-lit' stage several times, to the point where storyboards were drawn up and Robert Llewellyn had his body cast in preparation for the new Kryten costume, the big screen adaptation did not come to fruition in the 2000s.

Instead, when the cast and crew would next reunite to make new Red Dwarf, it wouldn't be a movie, it wouldn't be a "Series IX"... and it wouldn't be on the BBC. The show was about to enter a whole new era...

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