"Terror in New York City" is considered the best episode of "Thunderbirds" by "TV Zone" magazine, which sums it up as a "dramatic, tense story". It praises the realism of the "tightly-plotted" script – from the decision to make the Empire State Building the focus of the disaster, to the method used to transport "Thunderbird 4" to New York ("no "deus ex machina" cop-out is employed here"). On the damage taken by "Thunderbird 2", it notes that the idea that IR's machines are not invincible arrives as "something of a revelation ... we realise that the Tracy boys can actually be hurt". Among its few criticisms of the episode are the appearance of the Empire State model (which it describes as "a little insubstantial") and the fact that only two people are endangered by the building's collapse (which it considers to be the "most implausible" aspect of the plot).