A couple of years ago, when I was a college freshman, I showed Remembrance of the Daleks to a bunch of my dorm-mates. Their reactions were interestingly split along gender lines; the guys loved it, the girls loathed it. The really interesting bit was, though, that nobody really seemed to understand what it was about.
Of course, they understood the literal plot; those nasty alien jerks the Daleks were trying to steal an artifact that would enable them to travel in time. Much fighting ensued, and things blew up. The End.
"That was so stupid," protested one of the attractive young ladies. "What's the point of it?" I dunno...maybe it's a treatise against racism...
To my mind, Remembrance is obviously about racism. It depicts a senseless conflict between white Daleks and black Daleks, and both factions feel obliged to wipe out humanity out of a sense of racial superiority. The human villains, Mike and Ratcliffe, are white supremicists and closet Nazis. Mike's mom has a "No Coloureds" sign in the window of her boarding house. Plagued by doubts over his plan to wipe out the Daleks, the Doctor goes to a cafe and asks a black man for advice; notice that the black man works the night shift at the cafe, while the white guy gets to work the day shift.
Oh, yeah, and there's a voiceover of Martin Luther King, Jr. during the pre-credits sequence. So obviously, the episode has a lot to say about race in a not-so-subtle fashion. So how did everyone miss it?
Did the mere sight of robots and spaceships instantly convince them that they were watching mindless trash?
Remembrance of the Daleks has some good things to say; "don't be a racist like Mike;" "don't be a comformist zombie like the Daleks." Shows like ER sometimes attempt to convey these messages, but by taking a more literal approach they ultimately seem forced and preachy. If you approach a KKK member and say, point blank, "don't be racist, it sucks," he's not going to listen to you. You have to be a bit more subtle. Conveying a message through symbolic and indirect means - my rather crude definition of allegory - tends to work better.
Science fiction is generally looked down upon because it's not "real," but most of the great fiction of history has been allegorical and fantastic. Hamlet's plot is set in motion by a ghost; Macbeth has got loads of witches; Dante's Commedia conveys its message through imaginative symbolism and outright horror; the Aeneid has gods and monsters aplenty. And, at the risk of being lynched, I've got to say that the Bible has more than its fair share of "unreal" monsters, miracles, demons, and wizardry. Christ's parables are highly allegorical, rarely taking the "direct" approach in conveying his philosophy. Almost every important story in every culture contains fantasy and symbolic elements that overlay deeper, more "real" concerns.
Why? It's simple, really. Most important stories have a point to make, but their authors realize that making the point directly will diminish its impact. It's better to hint at the message, and force the audience to uncover the message actively by thinking about those hints. After all, the more you make the audience think, the deeper the moral will sink into their minds. To be a bit more mundane, fantasy elements in stories are like the sugar that help the medicine, the real message, go down.
Of course, allegory doesn't always work. Snakedance is another episode that springs to mind. When I watch it, I see all sorts of things in it; isn't writer Christopher Bailey saying that young people who don't care about history and religion, just material things, are detriments to society? Isn't Lon, the villain, a spoof of the modern cynical teenager? Then again, Martin Clunes, the actor who played Lon, hates the episode because all he sees in it is himself, in a stupid cloud costume, fighting a big rubber snake.
The bottom line is, either you dig allegory or you don't, but it is a legitimate and time-tested method of telling stories. People who ridicule Doctor Who tend to think it's about rubber monsters and spaceships, but there is obviously some deeper message that appeals to fans. We are, after all, an intelligent and literate bunch...ain't we?
And as a nice fringe benefit to all this weighty stuff, the Special Weapons Dalek is one mean, cool-looking mother, isn't it?
Oh, and by the by, Remembrance is an "A" of course. And so is Snakedance.