Effects

Effects artist Mike Tucker has perhaps the most screen time for an uncredited Red Dwarf performer - for it was him inside the Camille outfit. Mike ended up thoroughly caked in filth inside the moulded rubber blob - but that wasn't the only problem with it.

Attempts to pick up Camille's cocktail in front of the live audience were almost in danger of running into double figures! The disco dancing scene, however, was originally filmed as a slow smooch number - until Mike's bizarre moves proved funnier to the mesmerised crew. Camille was shown changing into the blob from her mechanoid state in what had, by now, become the traditional technique of splitting the screen, locking off the camera and cutting from one to the other. (More clever editing allowed one side of the screen to be compressed and the other stretched wide for White Hole. The left side was also slowed down while the right was accelerated.)

More impressive were the transitions employed for DNA. Existing 'explosion' footage (later used at the end of the show's credits, as well as during the planet potting scene) was reversed and incorporated into dissolves of the two shots, before and after. The DNA machine's beams of light were provided on set by lighting director John Pomphrey and augmented in post-production.

Paul McGuinness - by far the tallest of the effects team - donned the latex Curry Monster outfit for DNA. A three-headed corpse was also built by McGuinness. Elsewhere, Craig Charles was shot in front of a bluescreen to make his transformed self appear one foot tall (the others also partook in one bluescreen shot so they could run in front of the tiny Lister). Hattie was also filmed on a blue screen - requiring a brand new colour of polo-neck! - to allow her to be a superimposed in White Hole.

More bluescreen allowed the escort boots - on strings - to walk unsupported. In what became an oddly heart-rending moment, one set of boots were blown to smithereens by explosive charges. In the second half of an action-packed episode a light-weight shovel, umpteen faux-glass canisters and a throwing knife with a blade that retracted into its handle were constructed and promptly wreaked their havoc. The usual bazookoid blasts were accompanied this series by bullet-hits and wax-like blood.

The model department put together some superb ships for series IV. Ace Rimmer's story gave us not only our first glimpse of a human settlement in the Red Dwarf universe (the city dome on Io) but also the Space Corps test base which took Peter Wragg back to his Thunderbirds roots in its style. Ace's ship - subsequently named Wildfire in Rob Gant's Backwards novel - wooshed through space on wires... and crashed, complete with sparks, into Starbug. A miniature set of an ocean moon was constructed, complete with rocks on which the bug could be stranded.

Camille's own ship was seen in a couple of shots, as was the peculiar-looking DNA ship (complete with an extended arm leading from the 'Dwarf). Meanwhile, the Justice World station was brilliantly conceived to resemble the scales of justice, and planets were built (not to actual size, obviously) for White Hole. (The event was also portrayed in the show's most ambitious video graphic to date).