Do officers 'inherit' positions in Starfleet?

[UssGlenn]

Captain Kirk was assigned by Star Fleet to be CO of the USS Enterprise and replaced Pike, as far as I know, Kirk wasn't Pike's XO on the Enterprise.

Mendez asking if they knew each other probably rules that out, but Kirk was Pike's first officer in the Mirror Universe.

 

[Kraig]

Mendez asking if they knew each other probably rules that out, but Kirk was Pike's first officer in the Mirror Universe.

Promotion from assassination, one kind of inheriting.

 

[Mudd]

Just like that?

I can’t see it. There are presumably hundreds of officers at least who might be more experienced or flexible than Riker.

Riker is a hothead. He’s immature. This is visible in Gambit in which he sulks and has to have a strip torn off him by Troi to even start performing Captain’s duties.

Yeah, but he saved the Federation from the goddamn Borg.

This is one of the great plausibilty challenges of fantasy storytelling like Trek - maintaining the formation requires that characters continue to believe treated as fundamentally no different than their fellows despite accomplishing wonders that change the course of history.

In the first Abrams movie, Kirk prevents aliens from blowing up Earth. At the beginning of the second, he's busted for breaking a rather important service regulation.