Survivor ideas (posted 2025-02-25)
Apparently Survivor season 50 will be all about fan choices.
As a fan of the American Survivor (much less so of the Dutch Expedition Robinson), I have some ideas on how to improve the program, for the most part based on what happened in the most recent season, number 47. I also recently watched Survivor: Cambodia — Second Chance (season 31).
I have two main thoughts on how to make Survivor better, and then a few smaller ones.
The first one: like with season 47 start with 3 tribes. Starting with 2 and then go to 3 like in season 31 makes for a tribe that is way behind in everything, which is definitely no fun to wacht. With season 47, the 3 tribes worked really well, probably for a large part because they were all competitive. A single tribe losing everything just sucks.
In season 47, there was no tribe switch-up before the merge. I'm thinking this is something you want most of the time, especially with returning players. In that case, I would want to go to two tribes at 14 players. So 7 players per tribe. With the 3-tribe start that means either after the fourth episode, or after the third episode where in that episode, there's two tribal councils.
In the first case, the options are 6-6-2, 6-4-4, 6-5-3 or 5-5-4 for the three different tribes. If the third episode has a double elimination (from two different tribes) the options are 6-5-3, 6-4-4- or 5-5-4.
I'd make the merge at 14. This means two tribes of seven. And then make sure it's not possible for any of the original three tribes to have a majority on one of of the two new tribes. So the original tribes that have 5 or 6 members, they pick a buff out of a bag containing 6. So no more than 3 members of an old tribe can be members of a new tribe. For tribes of 3 or 4, you pick out of 4 buffs, and for tribes of 1 or 2, it's whatever remains. So that means either of the new tribes is 3-1-3 or 3-2-2, so none of the original tribes has the majority on one of the new tribes, so inter-tribe cooperation is unavoidable, adding the drama we love so much, reducing the randomness that we don't like but is sometimes necessary.
I think it's useful to have two challenges before the first vote to make sure people have good information to vote on. So have a marooning challenge immediately and then an immunity challenge later in the episode. This way, failing challenge performance will be clearer.
A new advantage: the tie breaker. Use it at a challenge, or at a tribal council vote.