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Data and Geordi are of course equal in rank from season three onwards.
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In real military hierarchies, the one reaching that rank earlier would have very clear-cut authority over the one reaching it later. That is, if the explicit
need arose for one to have authority over the other. But the LaForge/Data relationship (professional or personal) never ran into issues where Data's hierarchical superiority would have been of relevance.
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Bev seems to be considered more suitable for the command than dozens of Lt. and even Lt. Cmdr. officers who are wandering around the Enterprise!
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In that particular incident, the competition supposedly wasn't aboard the ship; the highest-ranking person was a mustard-shirted Lieutenant.
Of course, Crusher wasn't assigned to stay aboard the ship because she would have been particularly valuable there; she was ordered to stay there because Picard didn't want her down on the planet, where the away teams faced the hopeless task of locating a needle in a haystack and then protecting themselves from its sharp stings while deprived of the usual technological support of an orbiting starship. Picard was rather clever to assign Crusher a duty that would make it impossible for her to depart the ship (without facing court martial); merely leaving her as the CMO would have left open the possibility that she would send herself down on a medical errand.
It was incredibly forced and tactically unsound, but it sort of made character-continuity sense.
Timo Saloniemi