@ Psion - the previous, 11.1 console room set WAS a 360-degree set, or almost anyway. There were still gaps in the set that prevented shooting from every angle, although those were fewer than basically every set that came before - each of those missed at least one complete side. The way British television tends to be shot seems to treat their sets more as theatre stages, meaning that they would keep the cameras and lights on one side and shoot everything from there. In the 11.1 set, they MOSTLY kept everything on the featureless gray wall of the room, which probably explains why they never really bothered to finish it off.
More importantly, no console room set had sections that would be removed so you can place full camera and lighting setups and shoot the opposite direction. The 11.1 set was locked, and whenever we shot from the other direction (i.e. any shot where we saw the gray wall) they didn't remove any walls to do it; luckily the set itself was big enough that this wasn't ever much of a problem.
In various Star Trek sets, whole walls can be pulled out so they can have better composition in shots and have to compromise less. For example, think of any TNG episode where Data or someone working at one of the aft stations on the bridge, and we saw their faces and the front part of the bridge beyond:
http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/s4/4x03/brothers085.jpg
http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/s1/1x05/lastoutpost017.jpg
To accomplish these shots, they would pull the rear wall out of its frame so they can have a hole to place the cameras and lights and microphone. Likewise, basically every shot where we see everyone looking at the viewscreen / camera means they pull the whole front section of the set off to have room for all the equipment. The 11.1 set had no such ability to remove walls and they pretty much crammed everything they needed into the room itself. Again, luckily it was big enough that they had to compromise far less than in the previous 9/10 console room, which was missing 1/3 of the dome.
With this in mind, I'm thinking even more now that the new set has the ability to remove walls... Looking at that auxiliary console on the left of the picture, it would be great if they could have an over-the-shoulder shot of the Doctor working that console, with the main hexagonal console in the background. That could ONLY be possible if they could pull out parts of the set wall beyond, and I think they have built this into the set design. Hum...
Mark
