Did anyone else notice? (SPOILERS for SERIES 3)

[Mattathias2.0]

That one of the themes for this year was our enemies creating a new empire on Earth?

1. The Runaway Bride - The Empress of the Racnoss tries to do so.
2. The Shakespeare Code - The Carrionites.
3. Daleks In Manhatten/Evolution Of The Daleks - Daleks/Cult Of Skaro.
4. The Sound Of Drums/Last Of The Time Lords - The Master making Earth the central part of the new Time Lord empire.

Another theme seemed to be genetic mutation, DNA, or anything related in alteration of such.

1. The Shakespeare Code - Lillith using the DNA replication device to control individuals.
2. Gridlock - How the new drug thing Bliss ended up creating some virus that detroyed the upper city.
3. Daleks In Manhatten/Evolution Of The Daleks - The Daleks experimentation with humans (to create those pig monsters) Human Daleks, and Dalek's Sec evolution.
4. The Lazarus Experiment - Prof. Lazarus exepriement with his own DNA.
5. The Sound Of Drums/Last Of The Time Lords - The Master's use of the Doctor's hand to make him advanced age.

What does everyone else think?

[Calhoun]

The fact is, stories set on alien planets are a) expensive, and b) less popular than Earth-based stories. Therefore, it was a conscious decision by the DW production team to set most stories on Earth. And since most stories feature dangerous aliens, it's only natural that a high percentage of stories will feature aliens invading Earth, usually to conquer and/or destroy us. It just makes for more gripping television than aliens who don't want to invade Earth.

This isn't a new thing. I'm quite new to DW, but from what I recall of old episodes, Doctor Who has had plenty of stories featuring aliens on Earth for various reasons (and usually not good news for any humans who get in their way), and most of those were invasions of some kind or another. The plots varied, but the basic idea remained the same.

As for the DNA thing... it's the new "radiation" of sci-fi story-telling. In the past, if you wanted to, say, give a comic-book character superpowers, it was almost always caused by radiation. Nowadays, most readers know that radiation can't effect DNA in that manner (unless your "superpower" is dying on command ), so writers use genetic resequencing instead. I'm sure that if you watched the old DW episodes, you'd find plenty of "mutations" and "alien experiments" etc involving radiation, since (back then) the average viewer would buy in to the idea that radiation could have such an effect.

Take Spider-Man: in the original origin story from the sixties, he was bitten by a radioactive spider. In the recent films, he was bitten by a genetically-engineered spider, just to "update" the story and make it more accessable by modern viewers. No doubt, in the future, genetic engineering or DNA manipulation will be "old" or disproved, and writers will move on to a newer science to explain away aliens and superpowers and weird mutations. It's just a sign of how times change.

[Mattathias2.0]

Hmm. Yes, I get what are you saying. But I was stating in regards to recurring themes that took place during Series 3, as opposed to Series 1 or 2.

Take Series 1. The theme of a new empire wasn't playing a role (at least until the end, on Earth in the 2002nd century). This was only repeated in the Series 2 finale with the Cybermen and Daleks, al though the war with Torchwood, Daleks and Cybermen was the actual event (as no race gained control). Yet in Series 3, we have not just one, but 4 seperate and unrelated incidents where a race was trying to specifically create a new empire on Earth (Racnoss, Carrionites, Daleks, Master/Time Lord).

I have noticed that certain elements of one (or several stories) over the course of one series of Doctor Who plays a part in the final episodes of that series. Series 1's Dalek reintroduced the enemy that would play a huge role in the final episodes, The Long Game introduced the setting (as that event was closest to the finale's events), and Boom Town introduced the way everything would get solved.

[avidffan]

yeah i see that too
but in series 3 we get a great look at the importance of earth and humans to the doctor in the line

"we could take the tardis and travel across the stars , we could go anywhere ,BUT NOT EARTH "

i want to know why were so important to him or the universe for that matter
its a great thought to speculate about
but for better story telling i knida dont want to know you know what i mean