Costumes

As with the sets, it was all change for Howard Burden's costumes. Costumes from the previous series were used in the opening moments which followed on directly from season VII, but very swiftly the old look was abandoned as the crew returned to civilisation... sort of.

In the early stages, a suggestion was made to continue with the blue uniforms shown in flashback in the previous series. While the uniform design was, perhaps, 'better' than the original shirt and tie (which Howard had not designed), it was decided that the fans would prefer to see something of the old-style show - much as they had with the bunkroom set.

The old style uniforms were recreated with some adjustments to avoid anything too antiquated. Pewter badges of the Red Dwarf logo - already available as merchandise - were added, as were ID badges. The whole ensemble was also given a slightly more 'combat-y' appearance.

With an entire ship's crew suited up, the more fundamental changes were made. The new direction of Red Dwarf VIII found the crew imprisoned in the brig on floor 13, so prison garb was required. With a brand new colour palette, Howard went with lilac boiler suits to deliberately contrast the dangerous nature of the inmates. The prison guards in the tank were clad in black and blue, with helmets cloned from Hudzen 10's season III headgear.

Meanwhile the Canary army was given a real rough-and-tumble look, despite the yellow! Patches, padding and logos gave the suits a functional look, with Kryten wearing a Canary vest over his body armour. The Cat, being the Cat, was given a gold undershirt rather than the conventional yellow - but, filming being filming, by the end of the season shoot most of the gold had flaked away!

Kryten's armour was finally stripped away in the eighth series - after several previous attempts. Colour matching problems between the mask and the 'naked' suit prevented the concept being used in season VII's Tikka to Ride, and the strip poker sequence from III's Marooned was excised from the episode. This year, though, Kryten finally made it onto the screen full-frontally nude... and classified female.

Nudity also prevailed at the end of Rimmer and Lister's potato peeling duties. Aside from bald wigs, overalls that could be easily cut up and ruined were supplied and suitably disintegrated. A computer-esque wig and neck adornment were also created for Cassandra.