 Critic David Garland suggests that the challenge facing the Thunderbirds effects department was to strike a balance between the " conventional science @-@ fiction <unk> of the ' futuristic ' " and the " seeping hyper @-@ realist concerns mandated by the Andersons ' approach to the puppets " . Thunderbirds has been praised for the quality of its effects . Jim <unk> and Paul <unk> , writers of Collins <unk> Guide , consider the model work " uniformly impressive " . To Paul Cornell , Martin Day and Keith Topping , writers of The Guinness Book of Classic British TV , the effects are " way beyond anything seen on TV previously " . Impressed by their work on Thunderbirds , film director Stanley Kubrick hired several members of Meddings ' staff to supervise the effects shooting for 2001 : A Space Odyssey . 
