@keith: If there’s only a few flaws, it’s not a big deal. If a show gets everything wrong, it just spoils it though. Usually if the research and/or continuity of a show is that bad, the plot is not much better and the whole thing is a poor effort.
There is one episode of MAS*H titled Mail Call Three" where Radar (Corporal O’Reilley) receives a letter from his widowed mother. Radar is upset about is mother going out with a man–says they drive over to the next town in the man’s Nash Metropolitan. This isn’t possible. Nash didn’t introduce the Metropolitan until 1954 after the Korean war was over.
Just to keep this rant going, I also hate it when I’m watching a sci-fi movie and there are panels full of completely unlabeled blinky lights everywhere, blinking out interesting patterns, and that couldn’t possibly be monitoring anything whatsoever. I sometimes manage a server room, and have been in many control rooms, and equipment just doesn’t look or work like that. Maybe if you’re looking at the display for the registers of a 1960s vintage computer like a DEC PDP 11/40 or similar…
I’ve been an on and off Star Trek fan since the original series I watched when I was a kid. When you look at the control panels in close ups, especially in “The Next Generation”, you see buttons labeled with things like “17025” and “2546”, with meaningless numbers scrolling. It’s hard to believe that in the future, someone would have decided that this is a meaningful, ergonomic control system.
" I'm watching a sci-fi movie and there are panels full of completely unlabeled blinky lights everywhere, blinking out interesting patterns, and that couldn't possibly be monitoring anything whatsoever."
I used to work in the machining department of a foundry that made cylinder heads for most of the major manufacturers. They had several computer controlled transfer lines that did the machining. each had a big panel, about 4x8 ft with blinking lights on it. It looked just like those panels on the sci-fi movies, but once you understood it, it did tell you a lot about what was going on, but it was a long, steep learning curve.
Dating cars on TV. Hmphfff! 
Next thing you know,they’ll wanna get married!
@oblivion : One of the vital signs indicators in Sick Bay on TNG is “Medical Insurance Remaining.”
@asecular: Yes, I’ve been in a nuclear power plant control room. Those lights are not unlabeled, nor do they randomly blink out pretty, meaningless patterns.
On Stargate Universe, in one of the final episodes, they are in an installation where there are many screens. Upon zooming in (which you’re apparently not meant to do), most of the stuff on the screen looks like it should, except near the top of one, where it says “This is a sweet screen” Which I actually thought was a nice in-joke…
Always thought it peculiar that"Data" would have to interact or acess the mainframe via keyboard-Kevin
@thesamemountainbike "Re: the badge location; it may be intentional. Some municipalities require the badge to be worn on the opposite side to differentiate the actors from the real cops during shooting. Real cops are there along with the actors for people control and security. "
Now that’s a plausible explaination that I’d never thought of.
Concerning dating cars, I’d like to find one that can at least cook, and why shouldn’t you be able to marry a car? After all its 2012 (um 2013).
I love it when they are driving a 40’s or 50’s car with the column shift and they are always driving in the second gear position.
“I love it when they are driving a 40’s or 50’s car with the column shift and they are always driving in the second gear position”.
If these cars were GM cars through the mid 1950s equipped with Hydramatic drive, these cars had no park position. The sequence was N-D-L-R, so that it would appear that if the character in the movies was driving one of these cars, it would look like it was in 2nd gear. The cars equipped with the GM Hydramatic included the Pontiac, Oldsmobile, and Cadillac as well as the Nash, Hudson, Kaiser and even the Lincoln. If these were truly shift vehicles you observed in the movies, then the characters were driving in 2nd gear.
You would think that Data would at least have N Wi-Fi built in… Or the 23rd century equivalent…
The Borg have him beat on that
How about people using their cell phones in an elevator.
“Fistful of Datas” was the episode where they tried to hook Data directly into the ship’s computer. He ended up infecting the holodeck, wearing a dress, and trying to kiss Worf. Presumably, dealing with a sexually-harassed Klingon would be a large incentive not to try it again. 
For anyone who remembers “The Fugitive” TV series from the early 1960s, which starred David Janssen as Dr. Richard Kimball, in many of the places visited by Dr. Kimball there was a resident who drove an old light-colored Ford pickup truck (not sure of the exact color since the show was in black-and-white). This truck, which I think was a 1954 or 1955 Ford, was exactly the same one used in every different town the good doctor stopped in; there was a big spot on the right front fender, or maybe the right side of the hood, where it appeared that the paint had worn off; no matter what town, or what state, or whoever drove it, it was always the same pickup truck with the same spot on the right front.
@keith: My cell phone usually works okay in elevators, albeit with reduced signal strength.