In a shock announcement, the next series of Strictly Come Dancing will include dancing robots. Appearing alongside C3PO, Kryten, K-9 and Marvin, will be the Maybot 2.0©.
Insiders reveal that the Maybot 2.0© will dance the cha-cha-cha to the tune of Dancing Queen. Strictly judge Yubin Tangoed remarked, “It’s a brave new era for Strictly. The new range of automatons can dance at least as well as the average numpty who once appeared in series two of TOWIE.”
A battalion of programmers is reputedly on standby. The Maybot 2.0© is capable of repetitive, if clichéd, moves. In order to win, something resembling soul and rhythm will need to come to the fore.
“Soul and rhythm do not come naturally to the Maybot 2.0©,” said automaton designer Rob Ottix. “It was a GPS prototype. That’s Genuine Political Speaker, by the way.”
The Maybot 2.0©’s voice sequencer was based upon that utilised for years by Professor Stephen Hawking. It has a female voice equally devoid of nuance and inflection. Earlier models (e.g. the Maybot 1.3©) ran on wheels, like R2D2. One witty designer dubbed it “T2M2”. However walking technology was utilised, with some success. “Even so, the Maybot 2.0© walks like a constipated giraffe,” remarked Ottix.
The breakthrough came after a designers’ party at which they consumed large quantities of soft drinks and played Dungeons And Dragons. “The sugar caused the winners to spontaneously perform a dance,” revealed Ottix. “And we thought, we could programme the Maybot 2.0© to dance! What a night. By 5am the sugar had worn off, but the Maybot 2.0© could dance. Well, sort of.”
“Unfortunately, its movements were still rather jerky and uncoordinated,” Ottix continued. “However, we had set ourselves a deadline because Strictly entries had to be made later that morning. So there was no time to refine the algorithms.”
The Maybot 2.0© believes that it can win. In this case, though, it may truly be that No Dance is better than a Bad Dance.