Wait. Some of those pictures just look like hastily-painted plywood. Is it possible they assembled those walls, but didn't take the time to sand and re-paint for a smooth finish?
Even then it wouldn't show up like that on camera. They had to paint the woodgrain onto the Enterprise-D's horseshoe feature on the Bridge
If that were the case, wouldn't you see the seams between sheets, the spaces look too big to be covered by one panel of plywood. That said, I still think it's hilarious how much the expensive moire fabric from the link looks like metallic spray painted plywood.
Plywood also doesn't bend that easily around curves (transporter & conference room walls), without being saturated with water and placed in a massive jig for a couple of days. It is almost certainly a satin moire fabric of some kind.
It's also possible those are very large sheets of lenticular plastic of a type similar to those seen along the back walls of the transporter chamber and on the corridor beams.
That's probably not far off the truth. It's amazing the sort of problems that can we solved with the judicious application of shower curtains!
Heh. But the lenticular plastic in question is far more rigid than a shower curtain, and it was all over the main set for Laugh-In for a while.
So have we decided to pretend that that mannequin is a member of an alien race, since it does such a poor job of looking like a real human?
Plywood comes in 1/8 inch thick sheets, likely a common thickness for walls on sets, and that will bend on that kind of curve easily. I'm not saying it isn't fabric or other material, but painted plywood is still possible and probably really cheap. EDIT TO ADD: Never mind ... while Donny's link to the Vertigo fabric patterns look astonishingly like painted plywood, close examination of the set photos really don't. The briefing room walls look translucent and partially lit from behind. It might be painted plywood on the ceiling of the transporter alcove, though.
We had big sheets of lenticular plastic around the top of the Polaris bridge set, and many sample chips of different colors and patterns laying around, so I'm pretty familiar with the stuff.
I just got here, and have been making my way through from page 1. I know this is now five years old, but I still wanted to say, good on you for using the Easton Press Hornblower editions! I've never been able to afford them, but want them for my own library
Welcome to the board, @sintesi! If you haven't already, you should check out Donny's "Refit Enterprise Interiors (v. 2.0)" thread; he recently did an updated version of the VIP Lounge.
I've decided to ease myself back into modeling after taking a few weeks off from modeling anything (outside of my day job). I'm going to start with some light TOS modeling, converting my existing Season 2-3 engineering set into the Season 1 version. I've always wanted to create some Season 1 variants of the sets, as they have a warm charm that I feel some of the later season sets were lacking, mostly due to the way they were lit. Also, I've been itching to create the Phaser Control Room seen in "Balance of Terror" and the Auxiliary Control Room seen in Seasons 2 and 3, and both those sets require that I model the Season 1 version of the engineering consoles. Getting those consoles modeled and detailed will allow me to set some groundwork on fully realize those sets as well. I can then also create the gymnasium ("Charlie X"), ship's theater ("Conscience of the King") and Starbase 11 Computer Control ("The Menagerie Pt 1") very easily given the completion of this set. Just blocking things out so far. Wanted to post here so that my motivation gains momentum through the interest you guys show