Meanwhile, Ganino and Stillwell struck up a friendship and began to develop ideas for other episodes. Gene Roddenberry had distributed a memo that said the return of Leonard Nimoy as Spock would be unlikely due to financial considerations, and suggested that a reasonable alternative would be to feature Mark Lenard, who played Spock's father Sarek. During the same period, Stillwell met Denise Crosby – who played Tasha Yar in the series' first season – at a 1989 fan convention in San Jose. Over dinner, Crosby admitted she missed being part of the series and suggested that Stillwell write a script to bring back her character, who was killed off in the episode "Skin of Evil". Ganino and Stillwell began to work on script ideas that would involve both Yar and Sarek.