How did a pitch for an episode of Star Trek end up in this weekend’s premiere of Breaking Bad? Easy:

Vince Gilligan had been telling the story of a pie-eating contest gone wrong aboard the Enterprise to the writers of Breaking Bad for as long as writer Peter Gould can remember. “Since probably the first season,” laughed Gould, the author of last night’s season-5.5 opener, “Blood Money.” When it came time to give Badger another stoned (and yet amazingly coherent!) speech, Gould says he asked to borrow Gilligan’s Star Trek fan fiction, which involved an ill-fated Chekov and the gross misuse of the transporter. “We talk about Greek tragedy in the writers’ room, but there are a lot of geeks, so there’s a lot of geek tragedy, too,” Gould said.

That it then ended up as an animated clip makes it so awesome there are barely words. Check it out:

http://youtu.be/3M6yoeOglNw

Animated for Vulture by Matt Czap.