Or … um … mcgees.org (?)

You missed the best Data contraction detail, though.  I think it’s Datalore in which Data’s more-advanced-but-evil twin brother Lore (yes, the utter apogee of hard sci-fi was Next Generation) is pretending to be Data for some nefarious purposes.  And the conclusion is in a shuttle bay, where Data-or-Lore comes back to consciousness and reassures his crewmates by saying “It’s me.”

What.  The.  Fuck?!  “It’s me?!”?  This is to convince people that he is the incapable-of-contractions less-casual brother?!  Come on!  Lore could say “It’s me.”  Data would have to say “It is I.”

Maybe we can get a “Garfield is dead”-type theory going.  Maybe every subsequent Data appearance in the Trek universe was actually Lore.  Hell, maybe the entire Trek universe happened inside Tommy Westphall’s head.  Sounds good enough to be a Voyager script, at any rate.

Seriously, read that Tommy Westphall Wikipedia article.  I have never seen a greater overlap between “people with too much time on their hands”, “people who don’t understand the concept of a joke”, and “people who desperately need to get laid”.  Outside of, not coincidentally, Star Trek conventions.

And the ability to use contractions. The skin thing I’m willing to write off as Soong having a fetish, but my word processor can convert pairs of words into contractions right now! Today! If it were just written into the character as a minor quirk, I might be willing to accept it, but the plot of more than one episode hinged on Data not being able to say “it’s” (note the correct use of the apostrophe).