Having read a ton of sci-fi from that era, they were entertaining even if one overlooked the social commentary. Young me did not give a hoot that Star Trek's "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" was supposed to be social commentary but I can still recite the USS Enterprise's destruct sequence from memory because of the tension the cast and director put into that scene.

Being entertaining comes before social commentary, period. Modern entertainment is scorned by the public precisely because they do the opposite.