The Doctor Who “Wilderness Years” were a fertile time for independent audio series. Among the most obscure was musician Peter Trapani's Layton's Mission. Although it held no licensed connection to the Doctor Who Universe, it successfully featured actors well-known for their work on the show, including Colin Baker and Anneke Wills.
Ultimately, though, the series became infamous not for its plot, but for the eccentric, offensive, and frequently deranged behavior of its creator. This real-life controversy inspired Kaldor City creator Alan Stevens to launch a subtle parody: he skewered Trapani in the third episode, “Hidden Persuaders,” creating the maniacal inventor Leighton.
Now, with Mr. Stevens' kind permission, here is the story of Leighton's last moments, delivered from his own disturbed point of view.
i, leighton, present resident of westmare township, hereby do make my testament unto this world that i have been UTTERLY FUCKED OVER BY EVERYBODY. i, a humble man and AVOWED SEXUAL NORMATIVE, devoted subject of whatever government i happen to live under, an artist scientist and deliverer of visions, have been targeted by a conspiracy of SEXUALLY DISTURBED PEOPLE who have a strong intent towards rendering me unable to produce my gifts. this includes the use of such illegal and devious methods as MACHINE TELEPATHY, a machine by which without proper crystal shielding one’s inner thoughts and feelings, such as they are, are exposed to what we shall call so-called “mind piracy” (MP). thoughts are like downloads and can be shared over illegal piratical frequencies, and so one’s product can be ripped out and sold to the highest bidder before it can even get a release. and as such a conspiracy was placed against me when future previews were taken (PIRATED!!) by M(ind)P(irate)s which revealed my invention of what was likely a tremendous physical revolution in robot invention, a hexomanual polydirective assistance droid, and used a complex system of CHISELS to remove density from the floorboards of the office of a certain prominent executive upon whose patronage this humble creator was depending! causing embarrassment upon embarrassment when the expensive equipment broke through the damaged floor and provoked a completely unjustified threat of civil action and an order of restraint. since then, this party has taken it upon himself to organize a letter-writing campaign to the figure in question urging and in some regrettable cases ordering him to reconsider his standing on the matter. this, due probably in no small part to the conspiracy of SEX DEVIANT MPs, has not produced any observable results to date. similar attempts to pitch the assistance droid to buyers have turned up what we professionals call ZIP ZILCH AND NADA, again very likely probably due to activities by said mental terrorists.
but you’re shortsighted in the head if you believe that i preach this testament merely to spill my bile against the sick sick fucking disgusting practices of bureaucrats and power mad mental aberrants. no it is to reveal the roots of the vast conspiracy AS A WHOLE that these words are penned; for i, a man, am of uncommon origins and have yet to reveal the full nature of such due to a combination of emotional paranoia (my fault, unfortunate) and worries of exposure opening me to the forces that i shall henceforth call The Network. i feel i shall die soon in spirit if not in body and so let me tell you why those bastards and blooddrinking religious parasites target us by striking at the mind: consider a complex conspiratorial machine under which manufacturing ideas that defy opposition to the concept of the fourth dimensional cube are no longer considered socially “practical” or scientifically “sound.” yes, to many, the idea of a four part cube upon which time is imprinted is INSANE but only due to subversive mechanical subscripts etched in the social “conscience.” listen and learn……
the concept of day is recorded in history by the riddle which describes life as a four part cube. upon this cube are all four parts are the lives of men and so there are four parts of the day. as there is dawn there are babies, as there’s day there’s children and dusk men and night weak erectionless old men. a reflection, in nature and IN TRUTH, of how a CUBE, four parts/SIDES working together (clearly!) can create a unified whole of a lifetime or a year or a season. these things are all the same for there are fourths in each month and each day. we have all the parts of the cycle to remind us that when looked at from a simultaneous (genius) perspective, all time cubes move in fours, the same number of sides.
now consider as well a polyfolded concept of actually full on GRABBING a time cube and using it as a—to speak completely hypothetically—“machine” by which a genius consciousness could move sideways in time to breach into parallel worlds. consider a time machine but NOT IN THE WAY YOU KNOW IT—5D time. a time PENTAGON. consider too traversal through metatime might reveal various chronal conflicts in progress through timespace!! The Network is the society of the future. it invades futures across parallel worlds and reshapes them into places where they thrive—they believe all roads lead to them, their empire in time. one step and you've stolen time from right under our kids. many universes are theirs and at the head of all of them is one woman who i can only call Doloris—for her name means sorrow and suffering wherever she goes. under her serves my old enemy, a fucking hideous freak called Jarrod whose dead face is a robophobe's nightmare. the way that maniac manages to lisp through his frozen mask of a face i think he must be one of the sexual deviants which is why his visage is dead and uncanny and a thing out of the crypt, no life in a womanless world
proving his hatred of straight sensibilities is the fact that he targeted me because of my straightness. my woman, Vera Nerona, who was not afraid of me despite rumors passed around by inarticulate buffoons, and whose name i know DID NOT change across the timelines, died by Jarrod’s hand because his hatred for me is deeper than any man’s, which is saying something.
FUCKO KILLED MY WOMAN, TO WHOM I WAS/AM ENTITLED.
i have since fallen into a dour and bitter disposition and am deeply offended by the refusal of the unsympathetic masses to hear my diatribes about the cruel nature of being alive. but there are some who understand. Dekker, for instance, is a smart guy and also o’connor, who despite being a mere girl is also smart and understands much about the truth, not merely insofar as it pertains to a natural injustice against clever ones but also that we are warring against the Sex Subversive (Sexversive) Order promised by The evil sinister Network. we must not let timelines fall to the inclusion of social mess-ups, Mind pirates and aberrants! same ones who told me that perhaps i should see one which they dared call a “psychiatrist” to deal with the “mental weight” of my beloved’s departure. posing poseur faker frauds, i know real medicine when i see it and IT AIN’T WHAT’S BEING PEDDLED HERE
[SPONSOR TROODLE VON VUMP, A SERIES AVAILABLE WHEREVER FINE CHILDREN’S ENTERTAINMENT IS SOLD]
my doctor did not respond well to my fraudulent (joking only!!!!) breakdown bomb which i placed inside of his fabulous residence. he also did not take it lightly that i included a photo of a nude woman within the fake bomb so as to remind him of his duty to girls. most unfortunate…….
in any case my companions and i, dekker and o’connor and me, have made it our business to use our superior knowledge of 4D/5D time cube to traverse between worlds and battle against The Network and it and Doloris’ manifestations.
we have battled against killer entertainment implants, remote injected nanobombs, people who don’t like my singing, “encryptions,” technofanatics, mental aberrants and their lovers, intelligent reptiles, THE MOBile bOT development CORPORATION, THE KERNAL, people who don’t like that i corrupted their computers with POISON, THE HYPOINTERACTIVE VIRTUAL ENVIRONS, THE CORE, and also as well the MASK, source of the power of the masked deadface enforcers. which all may be the same thing overall i'm not sure
our Mission? to ensure that my inventions bring in the long foretold golden age of sideways time within a lateral cube to do what has to be done by me to counteract the NEW MIND PIRATE EMPIRE DARK AGES and renew the flow of positive data. and also to disprove allegations made towards me regarding flierjackings and certain elements of less than satiable interactions with neighborhood dogs.
I THINK I SPEAK FOR STRAIGHT SUPREMACISTS EVERYWHERE WHEN I SAY: FUCK HAPPY PEOPLE. THEY SHOULD BE ASHAMED FOR FEELING GOOD ABOUT THEMSELVES WHEN I DON’T
it is unfortunate to allege that Leighton has never had a woman. to the effect that this particularly insidious form of MPism that is a form of BRAINWASHING on a man who has only wished to share PLUSSED-UP machine values with people: leighton was in fact paired with a woman at some point in time and insinuations to the contrary are a reflection of enforcer intentions. these intentions should be considered, at absolute best, nonproprietary (this makes sense if it makes sense).
i imbue this spoken testimony with the ability to repeal the power of The Network, which slaughtered my home timeline and left me stranded on this mathematical continuum among fools and dirty dirt eaters. dekker and o’connor walk with me still and our next Mission is always just a timeline away….
wait
someone’s at the door
i i can’t see anyone through the window i
can it be the mps? i certainly hope not i am holding my breath i
AHHMYDOOR
HE KICKED IN MY
BE BRAVE BE CALM
WHO THE HELL ARE YOU
“Hello, Leighton, don’t you recognize me? We met three months back in [THE DIRTY FUCKER]’s office.”
ah yes, the Blunt Sagittarius
My God
What do you want?
his voice purring slick
“An alibi.”
NO I
No
i
~ ~ ~
Background
Well, if you’ve made it this far, congratulations—I’d imagine some further explanations are in order. As I suggested above, this story is what grew out of my explorations of an unusual rabbit-hole I found while investigating some obscure pieces of media marketed towards Doctor Who fans. During the Wilderness Years period of the Doctor Who fandom from 1989 to 2005, when Doctor Who was off of conventional airwaves, many licensed spinoffs of the series were produced by a variety of different companies who sought to plug the hole the show’s cancellation had created. Films like Downtime, Shakedown, and the P.R.O.B.E. movies as well as audio series like Kaldor City and The True History of Faction Paradox were made during this time, which still find sizable audiences among Who fans to this day. This era also saw the production of various pieces of Who-like media that were not licensed to be set in the Doctor Who Universe, but were still made with the intent of catching the eyes of Who devotees, most commonly by employing actors known for their work on the series. Examples include the films The Airzone Solution (starring four of the actors who played the Doctor), Soul’s Ark (which featured Colin Baker, Carole Ann Ford, and Wendy Padbury), and Backtime (starring the voice of Tom Baker), as well as the audio series The Commission (whose cast included Mark Strickson, Sarah Sutton, Louise Jameson, and the aforementioned Wendy Padbury). Also among these was Layton’s Mission, an audio series written by Peter Trapani (1971-2022) and produced by Exploding Gnomes Productions, aka Homebake Concepts. The series starred Colin Baker, Anneke Wills, Roy Skelton, Michael Wade, Bryonie Pritchard, and Patricia Merrick, all of whom had worked on Doctor Who and its spinoffs at various points. Layton’s Mission was advertised in the April 2001 issue of Doctor Who Magazine (#303) and Vanessa Bishop reviewed the first episode favorably in the magazine’s following issue, calling it “a tremendously odd and captivating 76 minutes…a giddy but breathless experience,” also praising the opening theme, a song performed instrumentally and vocally by Trapani called “Einstein Never Said.” Though 13 episodes of Layton’s Mission were planned, it’s highly likely that only 3 at most were ever produced and released. As of this writing, I have not been able to gain access to the series in any form—but that’s not to say that information about the series isn’t available. My quest to learn about this series ended going in some unexpected directions, and I’ll share now what I learned.
In Spring 2002, Peter Trapani released the following blurb for Layton’s Mission on his website: “For audio science fiction, join Layton's Mission – an adventure series involving a resistance group battling for survival against a cyborg police state of a possible future. Physicist from a ‘parallel’ Earth, Jon Layton, with his ‘Mission’ of follows [sic], sets out to combat the all-hearing, totalitarian forces of the Network. The main themes of this series include the pro's and cons of the technological revolution, and humankind's gradual amalgamation with the machines it spawns... The series has already received a healthy response after it's first test airings in the 1990's as ‘pilots’. Now redramatised, it is released periodically. Starring MICHAEL WADE as LAYTON, ROY SKELTON as AGENT DEKKER, COLIN BAKER as COMMANDER JEROD, ELIZA SKELTON as CARRIE, BRYONIE PRITCHARD as NERA VERONA, PETE TOWNSEND as BRONTON, ANNEKE WILLS as DELORIS, and guest stars, with additional voices by PETER TRAPANI. Written, conceived, directed & produced by Trapani.” The comment about the 1990s ties in with a consistent narrative across all the iterations of Trapani’s site that Layton’s Mission was written and recorded in pilot form as early as 1988, only for the episodes to be lost or damaged in some way, necessitating their re-recording or remastering in 2000 or 2001. According to a 2003 iteration of Trapani’s site, the original 1989 pitch premise for Layton’s Mission was: “Did you ever consider what might have happened if you had turned left instead of right? Do these questions sometimes bother you when you're feeling sorry about your lot in the dead of night? Does it really matter anyway? Would you really wish to know what was around the next corner, or what would have happened if...?” It is hard to determine which radio station test-aired these original pilot episodes, or indeed if they were aired in any capacity at all. And that’s assuming that the pilots existed in the first place.
It is similarly difficult to pin down the titles of the individual episodes, as it would appear Trapani changed them around as time went on. The first episode is most commonly found under the title Betrayal, but on the last surviving iteration of Trapani’s website in 2018 it is referred to as The Outsiders. The episode description from Trapani’s website in 2002 reads, “Layton's lover Nera Verona is dead. Was this a failed attempt on his life? He's a mobile robotics researcher, and the Establishment of a parallel world want his work, including the idea for the mysterious ‘Quantum Arc’. But what exactly is the secret of the quantum computer brain, Orb?” The 2018 iteration of the site has a different blurb: “An employee of the Corporation ‘The Mobot Development Corporation’(MDC) [sic], who is subjected to mind control by brain implant, learns more of his colleague's research. The Corporation wants the product of the research. The creator of the work may be expendable.”
Episode 2 is called Psychopaths and Artisans in 2002, but in 2003 it is called The Hives and in 2018 it is referred to as Fugitive. The initial blurb reads: “Layton has been asleep for eight months, and comes to in Judgement's laboratory. Judgement looks rather like Layton himself, and that's because he is the same man! Meanwhile, a third ‘shadow’ aspect begins to take control of the computer Network which governs the Hyper Interactive Virtual Environments or HIVEs (acronym). Could he possibly be a psychopath? According to Commander Jerod (Colin Baker), there are only two types of people in this world…” The 2003 description says: “Layton comes to in a Hyper Interactive Virtual Environment (HIVE) where a psychopathic killer stalks the streets of London town and a cyborg augmented force of Masked Police monitor the population using implanted ID cards & human bar-coding. But who or what is Shadow?” The description from 2018 reads: “The man who devised an alleged ‘quantum computer’, decides it's time to leave, because the alternative might mean liquidation. The Outsiders see an opportunity for overthrowing Insiders. There appears to be no way out for Layton and his shape-shifting ‘digital reticule’ ‘Orb’ until Layton thinks of a drastic, messy, handy ruse. The Orb(iton) Computer provides a ‘pathway’ along which to run.”
Episode 3’s 2002 iteration is called Dawn of the Cyborgs and is described as follows: “Agent Dekker is considering defecting from the totalitarian Network, rather than surrender his free thought and powers of intuition and creativity to the Almighty Core! Jon Layton encounters the food supply for the future of humankind – the so-called Strangely Anonymous Beast. And could the dinosaurs not actually have been as thick as s*** after all?” The product page from 2002 also has a review from Darren Saint of Black Pit Horror Fanzine which reads: “Fabulously eerie music. Roy Skelton's unbeatable cyborg voices are a stark contrast to his cleverly underplayed Agent Dekker, as we could possibly hope for. And if that isn't enough, the Pummelling Pam song will have you in stitches as a mind-blowing interlude... Most disturbing is the stint on euthenasia [sic], and it's not clear whether Mr. Trapani is in favour of it or not. At last we have a female central character with some bite to her!” The 2018 iteration of the episode is called The Digital Pigs, and instead of a blurb, Trapani says the following: “Work on high-def rebuild of the mutilated ‘Digital Pigs’ (part 3) and other parts up to Part 6, and then onto part 13 (requiring one dialogue recording session with two new cast members and one current or renewed cast member, for Part 7 onwards), is on-going, and was stalled by a set of pirates.”
The fourth episode is named on the 2002 iteration of the site as Adron’s People, while the 2018 site names the intended thirteenth episode as Counterpoint. No descriptions for these episodes are available, and as I mentioned above, I have never encountered evidence that Adron’s People or any further episodes of Layton’s Mission were ever completed, much less released.
Trapani’s website also teased a Layton’s Mission comic book series with art by 2000 AD artist Tim J. Love. Curiously enough, I can’t find any information about Mr. Love online, which strikes me as unusual given 2000 AD’s prominence in the comics world. A 2003 iteration of the site claimed that the Layton’s Mission comics would be drawn by cartoonist Larry Schultz, a persona who has proven equally elusive. This comic series never emerged.
It is worth noting that Trapani also apparently wrote and illustrated a series of children’s books called The Snoodles, however, there are no copies of these available online and their ostensible ISBNs don’t come up with results in any ISBN database. ISBNs don’t expire, so even out-of-print books can still be found on databases, indicating these books were never actually published.
There are some observations to be drawn here. First of all, it is clear that Peter Trapani was a fairly untrustworthy source about the nature of his own work and its state of release. Dylan Rees’ book Downtime – The Lost Years of Doctor Who notes that actor Michael Wade was experiencing health problems in the early 2000s, which ultimately resulted in him traveling to Brazil for treatment. This would’ve been around the time Layton’s Mission was produced, meaning Wade’s illness likely prevented him from carrying on in the starring role as Jon Layton beyond a small handful of episodes. On top of this, the artists of the tie-in comics Trapani promoted as part of Layton’s Mission seem to have not existed. All the same, Trapani was still promising the release of the full series, tie-in comics and all, almost fifteen years later. Along the same lines, The Snoodles seems to have never seen print, with all of Trapani’s claims to the contrary lacking evidence to back them up. It would appear that Trapani’s repeated promises of eventually releasing both completed versions of his art were deceptive—either to his intended audience, or to himself.
Secondly, there is the shift in Trapani’s writing style that occurs circa 2011. While early iterations of his website have a grounded, upbeat, commercial style to them, the most recent episode blurbs are littered with grammar and sentence structure errors, and take on an almost disinterested robotic tone. This reflects a shift in the general aesthetic of Trapani’s website, which becomes increasingly difficult to follow over the years as the creator starts crowding it with excessively-detailed paragraphs of non sequitur nonsense-prose and bizarre, occasionally vulgar conspiracy theories. The last incarnation of the site is a black-and-green maze of unusual links, dense paranoid rants, and questionable downloads. The archived version of the page is home to a number of EXE files that I have not tested, even in a virtual machine—on top of that potential danger, the site merits a content warning due to discriminatory language against fat people, Jewish people, and the LGBT+ community. While I initially considered that Trapani was possibly a very eccentric (and bigoted) performance artist, it does appear that at some point his mental health began to suffer, and he started to engage in some rather questionable behaviors.
While trying to find people who might know anything about the series, I came across a review of Layton’s Mission that indicated that not everyone agreed with Vanessa Bishop and Darren Saint’s positive appraisals of the series. Gareth Preston, on the website for Westlake Films in 2001, writes: “Avoid Layton's Mission like the plague. A very disappointing new audio series starring Michael Wade and Anneke Wills, it is set in a future dystopia where a scientist may have discovered a way of travelling to parallel worlds. However this potentially interesting idea is buried under acres of whinging and cyberpunk cliches.” This paragraph turned out to be a herald for things to come. As I emailed various parties who I believed might have had leads on learning about the series, I was left not only with the impression that most people who listened to Layton’s Mission found it to be poorly written, featuring an excess of increasingly pretentious infodumps, but also that Trapani’s attempts to distribute and promote the series earned him many enemies, which may have impacted critical assessments of his work. I read accounts of Trapani sending belligerent and unstructured letters and emails to a number of Doctor Who distributors and producers, including The Who Shop, Tenth Planet, Galaxy Four, Magic Bullet Productions, BBV Productions, and Big Finish Productions, for various perceived slights against him. Trapani’s attacks on distributors were mostly due to their refusal to sell Layton’s Mission, which possibly emerged as a result of the series’ poor quality. When stores turned down stocking the series, Trapani would call them up and pose as customers who were upset that the store didn’t carry the CDs. When this failed to sway business owners, he attempted to start a feud between two of these stores by emailing them defamatory statements which he claimed the opposite store was spreading. Neither store took these emails seriously. Trapani went after BBV and Big Finish by claiming unpaid fees for his acting roles with Big Finish and his technical/behind-the-scenes work (such as runner and general dog's body) with BBV. Indeed, Trapani took Big Finish to small claims court, only to be ruled against when his allegations were found to be baseless. He took them to court a second time, but with the same result, and a third attempt was blocked for being vexatious.
It seems Trapani was deadset on casting Blake’s 7 actor Paul Darrow in the role of Agent Dekker, presenting Darrow with a contract that would have been exceedingly unfair to him, effectively trapping him in Layton’s Mission forever. Notably, Darrow played a character named Tekker in the Doctor Who serial Timelash. This is not the only pseudo-plagiarism Layton’s Mission engaged in, as it seems to me from the available materials that the villains of Deloris and Jerod are based on Blake’s 7 villains Servalan and Travis. Deloris occupies the evil female commander archetype embodied by Servalan, while in archived photos of Colin Baker in the Jerod role, Baker wears a metal covering over his eye that looks to be styled on that worn by Stephen Greif and Brian Croucher as Travis. Additionally, one source indicated that the voice of the quantum computer Orb was a double for that of Blake’s 7’s Orac.
Trapani also took some flack from his intended audience for releasing Layton’s Mission in DVD cases instead of CD cases, implying that they were films or TV episodes instead of audio plays. Whether or not this actually helped to boost his sales is unknown.
Peter Trapani may have been sectioned to a mental health facility in the late 2000s after he attempted to scare a prominent figure in the Doctor Who community with a fake bomb. Like the “breakdown bomb” mentioned in my story, this phony bomb apparently had a picture of a naked woman inside. An archived document written by Trapani himself, a supposed arrest report, collaborates the idea that he got into legal trouble for this stunt, though Trapani’s way of going about confessing to this in the document is about as direct and coherent as anything he wrote on his website.
According to an obituary, Trapani passed away peacefully in his home in 2022.
To me, it is clear that the creator of Layton’s Mission was a troubled individual, and I sort of sympathize with him, as I always want to express compassion for people with mental health issues, especially serious ones. But at the same time it is very hard to look past the venomous bigotry he left behind in his writing. With all of the stories of his disreputable activity, and his repetitive, victim-blaming rants about being falsely accused of crimes and indecencies, it’s similarly hard to ignore the fact that he authentically harmed people with his actions. It’s curious, however, to observe the similarities between Trapani’s real-life paranoid conspiracies and the agitated police-state dystopia promised by Layton’s Mission. Many of the apparent fears of the series, from concerns over machine surveillance to anxieties about a loss of reality and identity, tie in with the demons that seemed to haunt the author’s life. Also informing his work was an authentic ambition (albeit one that was perhaps merely capitalistic in nature) to create something similar to Doctor Who and Blake’s 7. It’s unfortunate that his ego and his inability to distinguish fantasy from reality prevented him from creating something that actually found appeal among those fandoms. And it’s even more unfortunate that people were hurt and harassed in the process.
For Alan Stevens, co-creator of Kaldor City, Trapani’s harassment earned a parodic fictional version of him a grim fate in “Hidden Persuaders,” Kaldor City’s third episode. In that episode the character of Leighton (played by Mark J. Thompson) is a delusional fool who tries and fails to sell a six-armed multitasker robot to First Master Uvanov (Russell Hunter). Three months after the attempted sale, assassin Kaston Iago (Paul Darrow) tracks down Leighton to his residence in Westmare and shoots him to death. The copyright notice for “Hidden Persuaders” issues the following warning: “Unauthorised copying, hiring, renting, public performance and broadcasting is strictly prohibited or Leighton will sell you a crap robot.”
In writing this story, I drew upon the “Time Cube” conspiracy theory propagated by Gene Ray, who was, like Trapani, a deeply confusing and depressingly bigoted person. I leave the door open as to whether or not Leighton’s adventures occurred solely in his mind or if they happened somewhere within the pattern of the Great Illusion.
https://web.archive.org/web/20250000000000*/http://www.petertrapani.com/
https://www.discogs.com/release/32195079-Laytons-Mission-Betrayal
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