The plan: An all-star 'Survivor'

Survivor guru Mark Burnett says he's planning an all-star version of the show for next year that matches his favorite players from past editions.

If that comes off on schedule, at least one more regular version will be produced before it. But if it was the next saga put on tape, this is the lineup 2B would propose, culled from the first four Survivors.

Our criteria: Minimal whining. Minimal cute. Give us guts, smarts, curmudgeons and cunning. Tattoos. And comic relief.

Burnett says he wouldn't necessarily bring back all the winners. We say why not. Throw in ruthless Richard Hatch (No. 1), coy Tina Wesson (Outback), nice guy Ethan Zohn (Africa) and the Marquesas survivor and see whose strategy works this time.

Hold the contest in another tropical place and bring on an exorbitant number (in context) of Africa contestants. They deserve something for being put in the desert and having elephants use their water supply as a bathroom.

Better than any episode of Friends would be one more gathering that includes Frank Garrison, the people-loathing ex-military loaner; Tom Buchanan, the freewheeling, woman-loving Virginia goat farmer; Lex van den Berghe, the tattooed schemer who expresses sentiments such as "I'll find out who betrayed me and slit their throat," and Brandon Quinton, the reformed twentysomething whiner who wanted to be on the show because he didn't see "any twentysomething gay people on TV that weren't very promiscuous or into the drug scene."

And bring back Linda Spencer, the wacky earth mother stuck in a tribe with the whiny twentysomethings. She could have been entertaining had she not been ousted early in the twentysomethings' attempt to purge the older people.

The final four of the original -- the others being Kelly Wiglesworth, Susan Hawk and Rudy Boesch -- has been hard to top. Let runner-up Wiglesworth take another run at Hatch and Hawk take another run at both of them, whom she addressed this way in a bitter, teary speech before the final vote: "We have Richard the Snake and Kelly the Rat. Let it be in the end like Mother Nature intended it to be. . . . Let the snake eat the rat."

It's hard to find someone very compelling and-or not overexposed from the Outback cast (spare us more Jerri Manthey and Keith Famie), but we go with personal trainer Alicia Callaway. She teamed with Hawk to give weekly episode analysis for TV Guide during the Africa series, so they can so whose mind works the best when theories have to be put into practice.

The underappreciated hunky Hunter Ellis -- uh, that's his underappreciated outdoors skills -- deserved better than what he got on Marquesas, and obnoxious, lying Boston Rob Mariano is the perfect foil for just about everyone here. We'll add another calming influence, Vecepia "Vee" Towery, who so far is using Zohn's strategy well, but we predict it won't get her much further with the Marquesas group.

And finally . . .

He's been on every Survivor. The contestants have had to put up with his endless questions, fatherly speeches and well-fed, well-rested countenance at every turn. It's time for host Jeff Probst to put up or shut up.

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