Posted on: Thursday, December 27, 2001

A post-Sept. 11 kind of 'Survivor'

By Bill Keveney
USA Today

When "Survivor" producer Mark Burnett put together two military-themed reality projects months ago, he had no idea public interest in the armed forces would be front and center now.

"Because of the war in Afghanistan, it couldn't be better timing for (programs that) show positive military traits," he says.

War games themselves will be the centerpiece starting Jan. 16, when "Combat Missions" premieres on USA.

In that 15-week series, four teams of special forces veterans and police SWAT team members will take part in exercises modeled on wartime situations. Retired Navy SEAL Rudy Boesch, a star of the initial "Survivor," is the camp commander.

Burnett, speaking from the fourth "Survivor" production in the Marquesas Islands north of Tahiti, doesn't believe the TV special operations will suffer in comparison with the real thing in Afghanistan. Much of the war isn't on television, but the public still has great interest, says Burnett, a former British paratrooper.

"You don't often get to see real Delta Force or CIA" operatives in action, Burnett says. But "the most important thing is, you don't just see the guns going off. You see that these are just regular guys, these special operations SEALs, Delta Force" members, Green Berets, Marine recon veterans and SWAT officers.

He disputes those who say reality series in general will suffer in light of Sept. 11 and its aftermath, saying a show's quality, not its genre, determines its fate.

Twenty-two teams of men and women representing the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps traversed a rugged Alaskan landscape in "Eco-Challenge: U.S. Armed Forces Championship," another competition in the expedition-racing series.

The winning four-person team will compete against the world's best in a championship final in New Zealand. That competition will be shown in April.

The U.S. military was not directly involved in" Combat Missions," but representatives told the producers what kind of activities and information they didn't want presented for security reasons.

"There's no secrets given away," Burnett says.

"Eco-Challenge" doesn't depict military exercises, but the round-the-clock trek up mountains, down rivers and over terrain frequented by bears and giant mosquitoes shows off the physical skills and training of service members, one competitor says.

"You see just how high-quality these men and women are," says Marine Capt. Eric Kapitulik, a 29-year-old reconnaissance mission officer who completed the race in four days despite a nasty case of the flu.

The competition was taped in June, a time of 24-hour daylight in parts of Alaska.

However, Kapitulik says, "Eco-Challenge" served a more important purpose as a benefit for the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (taps.org), which provides support services for families of fallen military personnel.

His team, Force Recon, competed to honor seven Marines who died in a 1999 helicopter crash during a vessel-boarding exercise off California.