Trust me, it was only out of desperation that I flashed recovery on a dead battery. Since it was the only non stock firmware on the system, I thought that there may have been an interaction between the new boot and the TWRP recovery. Having flashed earlier in the day, I knew that I could get stock recovery back on the tablet if I was very quick. I knew I had about a minute in the bootloader, so the command was sitting waiting for the bootloader to come up.
In any event, it seems that yanking the charger and immediately forcing the tablet to power off allowed the system to behave correctly when I next plugged it in. The best thing is to not let the battery drain that much.