Roddenberry felt that the noble Federation would never sneak around, and so never developed cloaking technology. The only time the original Enterprise had a cloaking device was when they stole one from the Romulans for Starfleet Intelligence. In TNG they retconned this by establishing that the Federation and Romulans had a treaty saying Starfleet could not develop cloaking technology -- why the Federation would put themselves at such a disadvantage is never explained. On DS9, the Federation, Klingons, and Romulans allied themselves against the Dominion, which finally allowed Starfleet to equip ships with cloaking devices -- but unfortunately the Dominion had ways of detecting cloaked ships.

Isn't that pretty much the same thing?

1. Brushing their teeth with 1-2 strokes and spitting once in less than 1 minute.

2. Eating Chinese Food directly out of their paper take out boxes. I'm Asian and I have never seen anyone do this. Especially if you order an a la carte entree....that's way too much meat for 1 serving. This would only make sense if your eating Noodles/Chow Mein.

Maybe everyone on TV and in movies eats only Chow Mein.

Heh, well I'm Irish (as are most of my roommates) and we Micks do this all the time... although that may be because that's how people eat it on TV....


-Doc

The good guy takes out the bad guys with one shot to each and the bad guys can only seem to hit the ground behind the good guy as he runs.

Phone conversations that end without a good-bye.

Presents where the bottom and top of the box are wrapped separately so they lift off one another without ripping any paper.

Four people sitting at a square table with one side left completely open.

I've long wanted to buy one of those sheet sets that only crosses my navel yet comes up to her armpits while we're both laying down. They seem to be readily available in Hollywood!

And the correct answer to this question is "Anytime that anyone interacts with a computer".

True. It's also a show where it is always daytime in Miami.

White people being friends with black people.

I know! And how about when they say "I'll pick you up", but they met in a bar or coffee shop and you never see them get the address - so how do they know where the other person lives?

The Tanner home on Full House looks as narrow as a cracker box from the outside, yet the inside is unbelievably spacious. It must have been constructed by the same architects who designed the Tardis.

Almost anything in a hospital. I know they have people advising them, don't know if they have bad advisors or are just not listening to advice. Side rails down. Sound of a ventilator working when the patient isn't on one (seems to be a standard hospital sound) Intubated patients with way too much of the tube outside their mouth, and the tube isn't secured with anything. Same with NG tubes. Doctors doing all the care, nurses nowhere to be seen. IVs not set up right. And on and on

Most legal shows show cases seemingly going to trial within a few days of when the lawyers are hired. That's definitely fantasy-land.

Fixed

Someone else talked about the why, so I'll touch on the "how". It's best to think of it as a non-stop arms race. Everytime the Federations figures out how to see through it, the Romulans/Klingons would keep changing something about it to keep one step ahead. I'm sure that everytime a ship decloaks near a Fed ship, they take as many sensor scans as they can just to get an idea of power usage, radiation levels ("know anything about a radiation surge?" "Only the size of my head."), and any other info, and constantly send it back to Starfleet R&D who would compile it with all the other fleet reports, and then send it back out as sensor system "updates" if you will.



As for my pet peeves, anytime a character in the show doesn't ask the questions that the viewer has been yelling at the TV screen for the past ten minutes. And I'm not talking things where the viewer sees a scene that the other character wasn't privy to, but common sense things that any sane person would ask. I can't think of a specific thing right now, but I know I've seen it, and it always reeks of lazy writing.

This is probably more of a movie pet-peeve, but it happens in TV (especially cable) too: when a woman has her bra on during sex. Uh, no, unless the guy has some sort of bra fetish, they're coming out, always.

I realize that it's due to the actress not wanting to be topless, but they could shoot from the back or above the shoulders, rather than the silliness of having every article of clothing off except for the bra.

It's definitely the "how could these people reasonably afford such a spacious place in the neighborhood they live in with the jobs they have." I never noticed it as a kid, but as someone that actually has to pay rent now, it's glaring.

I also dislike the obviously faked "driving in a car" scenes.

Similar to the computer complaint, but any time people are playing videogames. You'd think they were all playing the Wii, the way they gesture like that. It gets even worse when they have some kind of videogame-related crime on one of those crime shows.

I also don't see a problem with eating chinese food with chopsticks or eating out of the boxes... seems like something college kids would do, for instance. Also, I don't generally note the wardrobe (of course, I watch a ton of anime and animated series where the characters wear the same thing every single day).

This is particularly annoying when they're using Atari 2600 joysticks with sound effects to match.

Fat guys with slim attractive wives. (According to Jim, King of Queens, ect.)

People always swallowing pills dry.

Canned studio laughter.

Obvious product placement.

Kitchens with swinging doors, like saloons have. (I really don’t watch traditional sitcoms anymore, but this was the norm for the 80’s and 90’s shows)

In action/thriller shows when a newspaper, or television always reports something at the exact moment it needs to so a character can see it. (Magic TV/Newspaper Syndrome. This happened a lot in Prison Break. People would be reading a news paper then look up and see that the person sitting in front of them was wanted. Or when characters are sitting in a bar and the TV all of a sudden reports something crucial to the plot and the exact moment the character needs to hear it.)

The liquid-less cups have always been my biggest gripe with television. Put something in there to at least make it look like it's got something to it. I hate seeing people drink from a cup, and occasionally complain about what's in it, when it's obvious there's nothing in there at all.

It's utterly ridiculous. Why would she suddenly get prudish and hide them after the horrible, unspeakable things she just let you do to them?

Same goes for getting up after and bringing the sheet with her. I know why, because it may be a PG movie or something, but still. Shoot it cleverly. Don't have people act completely unrealistically.



-Doc

Like in Austin Powers!

Some form of talent show always offering the exact amount of money needed to fix a characters problem (this was spoofed well in Scrubs one time)

People shooting locks off doors. In reality the bullet would go bouncing all over the place.