Stephen La Rivière writes: When Gerry Anderson entered the world of TV puppetry in the late 1950s, Andy Pandy and Noddy dangled rigidly on thick strings in their two-dimensional worlds. Within a few years he and his team had dragged the discipline into foreshadowing the 21st century.
Anderson's embarrassment at working with puppets meant that his goal was to make the very best marionette masterpieces. That drove the primitive technology forward: puppets that could "speak", groundbreaking miniature effects and even the first video assist – a system that allowed the entire crew to see what the camera was shooting, not just the cameraman.
His editor's eye enabled him to make mini-feature films for television in an age when the competition was distinctly cheap-looking. His shows through the decades were training grounds for top special-effects technicians – remember their pioneering work the next time that you marvel at the miniatures in Alien, or even the latest Bond.
Howard Dawber writes: The realistic approach of Gerry Anderson's live-action series Space: 1999 broke new ground with its workplace-like set design and a matter-of-fact attitude towards technology. It anticipated the "used universe" designs of the Star Wars movies, and many later films.
In earlier shows such as Star Trek, Lost in Space and Anderson's own Fireball XL5, technology had been treated with reverence: spacecraft had shiny, curving lines reminiscent of 1950s automobiles. However, Space: 1999's Eagle Transporter was basically a big space truck, often covered with moon dust, and it was echoed in the design of Princess Leia's blockade-runner spaceship in Star Wars (Episode IV, 1977).
More recently, affectionate homage was paid to Anderson's whole supermarionation style and storylines in the successful spoof movie Team America: World Police (2004), from the creators of South Park. Anderson deserves to be remembered as one of the most influential British creators of science fiction.