This is a tricky issue, as really, Doctor Who has a great deal of pull from older audiences and fans as tipping the hat to the older series, so nostalgia always has to play a part. For example, the brilliant 50th anniversary special was positively dripping with nostalgia, right down to the use of the Zygons (the charming chap pictured above) as the villains for the first time since the seventies. But that was an episode which needed a relentless onslaught of nostalgia to function in anyway, seeing as they included anyone who has ever officially been the Doctor. The show can be guilty of being a little too nostalgia though, and in a way that is not necessarily as heart-warming. For example, we were reminded of the 11th Doctor's love of fish fingers and custard for the first time in months in his final appearance. There was a vague point there, being that he was about to regenerate, but other than that, there was no purpose to it. Nostalgia is something we should save for episodes which are years or,preferably different generations old, not just from the same series, or they run the risk of being ruled utterly pointless.
