[1][2] A line of dialogue that would have revealed this in The Wrath of Khan was edited out prior to the film's release and never restored; as a result, the canonicity of this piece of information has been debated for more than two decades.

Some non-canon novels, however, hold that at least some Vulcans were fully aware of the Romulans' heritage, but deliberately concealed that knowledge from the Federation, considering it an embarrassing internal affair that should not be revealed to their allies.

The TV series Star Trek: Enterprise established in canon that some factions of the Vulcan government were aware of the connection as early as the 22nd century.

Their Vulcan crews were abducted by Romulan scientists and their fertility was manipulated to produce half-Romulan, half-Vulcan children such as Saavik to use in mind control experiments.

In The Pandora Principle, Saavik, unlike the other half-Vulcan, half-Romulan child survivors, refuses a DNA test that would identify her Vulcan relatives.

Saavik and David Marcus (son of Admiral James T. Kirk), subsequently were assigned to the research vessel USS Grissom to study the newly formed Genesis Planet.

In the 2024 short film 765874 – Unification Saavik is shown wordlessly introducing Kirk to a grown Vulcan looking male (played by Mark Chinnery and named Sorak in the credits) indicating he was her son.

Saavik was at one point to appear in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, "Cause and Effect" in a scene in which the Enterprise-D encounters a starship that had been trapped in a time anomaly for some 80 years.

[9] Saavik, however, does appear in the novelization of the film, as a recruiting officer who inspires Valeris to join Starfleet, and offers some insights on how to deal with a dual heritage.

It also starred James Doohan, Mark Lenard (not as Sarek), Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols and George Takei, with a walk-on role by William Shatner as "the Admiral".

[14] Samuel A. Peeples' unused script, Worlds That Never Were, for the second Star Trek film, had a male character called "Doctor Savik", who eventually was morphed into the female Lieutenant Saavik.

[16] Anne Cranny-Francis, discussing her character's background as revealed in a 1990 novel, The Pandora Principle, by Carolyn Clowes, described her as one of the "strong and courageous" women in early Star Trek stories.

[18] Sociologist Bärbel Schomers similarly characterized Saavik as an important character and strong female role, and listed her among several such figures that were conspicuously removed from the Star Trek franchise shortly after their introduction.