Remember that time in Season 3 when Buffy fought a bunch of Tyrannosaurus rexes? Well, it happened, if you count the books as canonical. In “Paleo” (September 2000), which is set at the start of the spring semester of senior year (I’d place it just before “Gingerbread,” 3.11), three baby T-rexes and a timimus get resurrected from fossilized eggs via magic and the Scoobies must fight them.
As Yvonne Navarro, writing her first full “Buffy” book (she contributed a short story to “How I Survived My Summer Vacation”), says in her introduction: “A book about dinosaurs and vampires is just too much fun.” And there is indeed a fun factor when the dinosaurs hatch and grow, even if “Paleo” doesn’t achieve “Jurassic Park”-level intrigue. But I can’t quite get past the weirdness of Buffy fighting baby T-rexes in the alley next to the Bronze and later in the local museum and finally in the Sunnydale High swimming pool, and the fact that a timimus is locked in the library’s book cage.
More so than most “Buffy” books, I just can’t picture this happening on the TV show. That said, the gang does fight huge reptilian monsters fairly often in the comics. In “The Blood of Carthage” (Issues 21-25 of BTVS Classic), for instance, they battle a beast so huge that our human heroes climb on it like gnats trying to annoy it.
I think it comes down to this: As fans of “Buffy” books and comics, we by necessity have to hold three different – but overlapping – versions of the Buffyverse in our minds. Because it’s visual, I accept the comic-bookiness of the comics. But with the novels, I default to picturing the events playing out on TV, and “Paleo” pushes the limits of believability.
Further hurting the book, Navarro overwrites most sequences — Oz and Buffy vs. the T-rex in the museum is interminable — and overstays her welcome with character arcs and themes that I resolved in my head long before the narrative does.
On the plus side, her original character of Kevin – bitter about spending his last semester of high school in small Sunnydale instead of his beloved Chicago – is sympathetic. And Navarro does decent work with Oz, giving Dingoes Ate My Baby (just a background band in the show) a plot line for the second time in the novel series, following “The Gatekeeper Trilogy,” where Oz and Devon are on the outs because of the three nights per month that Oz is unavailable.
Since Season 3 is packed with arcs for most of the main characters, focusing on the slightly underused Oz – who we learn is a dinosaur buff — is a good way to add something fresh to the narrative. The execution is heavy handed, though, as Navarro bluntly forges a thematic link between a predatory manager-wannabe who is stalking the Dingoes and a museum worker, Daniel, who is taking advantage of Kevin (who possesses the dino eggs Daniel needs for the magical resurrections).
Buffy is in fine form under Navarro’s keystrokes. The way she jumps into the pool to take on the T-rex is very much in character, and I can picture such a scene, even if I have to shift my brain to comic-book mode. The central friendship in “Paleo” is between Buffy and Oz, which doesn’t jibe with the TV series, where they are part of the same group of friends more so than friends who would hang out as a pair. Exploring their dynamic is a potentially good idea, but Navarro misses a chance for them to talk about Willow, with whom Oz has recently reunited (in “Amends,” 3.10).
The author is slightly off the mark with the rest of the Scoobies. Giles and Willow effectively research the situation, learning that these dinosaurs are vessels for a demon that is trying to reform into a super-demon (or something like that). But they go through their tasks coldly. A particularly off-tone moment comes when Willow is bored with what Oz has to say about dinosaurs. Especially now, since she has just gotten her boyfriend back, Willow would be very engaged in all of Oz’s interests.
Although one could argue it works as a lead-up to “The Zeppo” (3.13), Xander is particularly useless in “Paleo,” doing little more than annoying Giles with quips. Angel is in lurking mode, while Cordelia is mostly absent, having broken up with Xander not long before this.
So, yeah, Buffy did fight T-rexes in the middle of Season 3. But “Paleo” is a too-slow read, and the predictability of the journey is why this momentous event ends up being forgettable.
Click here for an index of all of John’s “Buffy” and “Angel” reviews.