Producer David Richardson said: "How brilliant to have Matthew Jacobs return to the series to write Puccini and the Doctor - a man so dedicated that he woke up at 4am in Los Angeles to listen in to our studio recordings! He's given us a lovely and imaginative tale, which feels very much in the spirit of the Eighth Doctor TV movie."

Matthew Jacobs said: "This is the first time I've written a Doctor Who adventure since 1996. The Doctor is such an integral part of my life, so it's been fascinating over the years to see it grow and grow. Paul has kept the Doctor alive at Big Finish in a marvellous way and he has become so much more sophisticated as a character than when we were starting.

"I was over the moon when script editor Matt Fitton asked me to put together a story. We discussed that this version of Paul's Doctor is a bit closer to the TV movie Doctor - inquisitive, not as embittered as he gets through the Time War.

"The idea that stuck out was one where I got to deal with some unfinished business from the TV movie. In the movie, the Doctor says how sad it was that Puccini never got to finish Turandot, and it was the bane of his life towards the end. I wanted to tell a story to do with the nature of how we use music and how we search for love."