Reflections
There is a surprising number of reflections present in the animation and they can be found in the places you wouldn't really expect them (or need them). For example the speed lever as shown on the right. It does look very good though especially when coupled with fast action such as the missile showing reflections of the lake underneath. Reflections also add realism to the water such the trees reflecting from it and since they don't look sharp, it makes the water appear wavy. Some more reflection shots are shown below.
Shadows
Probably more important than reflections are shadows and they are certainly present in enough scenes. A very nice effect is when the angels are flying, different parts of the cockpit cast shadows from the sun. What's even more important is that they move as the planes move as shown in the image on the right so they are not just baked textures.
Lighting
Some nice dynamic lighting effects are also produced such as when the missiles are fired from the planes. Another one shows up when the decoy flares are fired from the vehicle. Obviously, it would be very difficult to make nice lighting effect for everything so the few that the animators made are highlighted by the close up camera shots.
Explosions
The explosions present in this sequence are interesting because they don't really blow anything up... except for one. So, for the explosions that are just the missiles blowing up, it seems that a fairly simple particle effect would do the trick. However, that one explosion is actually a bridge being blown up by the rocket from the vehicle. There doesn't seem to be any physics involved in it and the director tries to hide that carefully.
For example, when the rocket first hits the bridge, it explodes and a particle system-like effect occurs. However, the camera then points away from the bridge only to come back to it when the explosion is almost over. At this point (image on the right - 13:18) there are only a few bigger pieces flying around and that seems like keyframe animation. So, the same technique seems to appear over and over again: do what you can to make it look good on surface and take care of the rest with some clever directing. Which is perfectly fine since animation is always just a bunch of tricks.
Water
Water is another one of those difficult things in animation to get right, especially without a 
complex physics engine driving it. Apparently there aren't many shots involving interaction with water since this is after all a science fiction show. Therefore, the shot of the vehicle entering water doesn't seem terribly realistic. The waves in the beginning are actual good however, they magically disappear as opposed to moving out of the picture on the surface of the river. Particle effects of the water droplets don't look that great either. When the Captain Scarlet is getting out of the water, again, a clever camera positioning avoids a close up of water and him getting out of it.
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