Aras!? Aras!? Anyone but that hack. Please, Survivor was an average season in comparison, but all I'm going to remember is how Terry was robbed of a deserving Sole Survivor title. The guy wins nearly every immunity challenge, a heck of a lot of rewards, spends days on end on Exile Island, defies the odds of a minority tribe at the merge and finds the hidden immunity idol for God's sake and he looses out to the second best (by far, in both directions) guy in the game and a girl who didn't do jack on the Island? Please.

Also, Cook Islands for the next series? I would have thought that after an island one they would have taken it to land. And when I say land, I mean Australia or Africa land. The middle of a damn desert of something. Hopefully Series 13 (quite a good run for something that doesn't have too much variability in the creation) picks up from the two average seasons that have just gone by. They really do need to find some great characters that have made the memorable seasons, for example:

Season One: Rudy and Hatch
Season Two: Jerri, Colby, Michael, Keith and Elisabeth
Season Three: Ethan, Lex, Frank and Tom
Season Four: Rob Mariano and Robert DeCanio
Season Five: Brian and Erin
Season Six: Rob Cesternino (I used to consider this guy the greatest Survivor contestant ever, and I still do, to an extent, but he was replaced by Chris from Vanuatu), Jenna, Heidi, Butch, Christy, Mathew and Dave (I have come to the conclusion that Survivor: Amazon might be my favourite)
Season Seven: Rupert, Fairplay, Lillian, Sandra, Darrah, Burton and Andrew
Season Eight: All of the All-Stars (bar maybe two or three)(do note that a lot of the people I have mentioned appeared in that series, so "The Bosses" must know a thing or two)
Season Nine: CHRIS!!!! (bar none, with no exceptions, the greatest Survivor to ever play and win (I might post on this later)), Ami, Eliza, Chad, Julie and Twila
Season Ten: Bobby-John, Steph, Tom, Angie and the Ulong tribe (for never winning an immunity challenge)
Season Eleven: Steph (again), Bobby-John (again), Judd, Rafe, Gary, Brian and Brandon
Season Twelve (just finished): Terry, Austin and Aras (I suspect I only remember Aras and Austin because they were on my T.V. less than 24 hours ago)

Now those are the people I can remember off the top of my head, without having to research the series. And looking back, there were only two very bad series (four and five), and two average seasons (in comparison), ten and eleven, preempting the just finished twelve, which matched them. So seven to five isn't too bad. But the odds that this next series will be average as well are on, which means that fourteen had better be a good mix up to keep everyone interested, like another All-Stars, this time with complete All-Stars and a lot of them. Twenty would be ample and enough spots to get everyone's favourite in. And put it in-land, like I said. Islands, yeah, sure, great. But alternate with them. I rate Amazon, Australia and Africa three of the best, and they are all in land. Africa had a great twist in that they had a village-esque set up. Great idea: do it again! But, no, it's the Cook Islands this time. The only saving grace will not be Exile Island (It was good in the beginning, but after Terry found the idol, it was pointless. One way to solve this is have one main idol that counts across all the weeks and then, say, fourteen other "this counts for this week" idol buried there from day one or day to day. This would make the game extremely unpredictable and exciting.), it will be the people on the islands and whether they are great and memorable characters or not. Whether they will be or not, well, we will have to wait until the end of the year to find that out.

Thomas.