Using ideas and plots from something familiar can prime players into roleplaying, as they have some preconceptions and initial investment in the scenario. We ended up basically giving our own commentary on the issues raised through our characters. It was a lot of fun. Word of warning though; make sure your players already view the OG content favourably AND make sure the content is appropriate to the setting you are running! If they guess where you took it from, give them the kudos for knowing it and run it. Change parts of it if you wish to give them an unexpected twist, or let them call it and reward them for it.

There are several Trekkies in my group and we just finished a session that I had pretty much stolen from an episode. It fit quite well into the narrative and gave some character moments to an otherwise combat focussed player. We had a lot of fun and it opened up some interesting plot hooks for the party.

I wrote a campaign for three first timers, taking inspiration from "the hangover" 

Part of it being the amnesia - since they didn't remember the previous day(s?) it allowed me to bring a group with different backgrounds together, gave them a goal (finding out what they where doing the previous night) and allowed me to show them the town. 

Even made them wake up with a panther in the room - owned by a half-orc tavern brawler, who was mad at them.