The ribbon connectors came today; they're a bit disappointing as the leads are barely longer than the ones on the ribbon itself. The only plus side is I can bend the pins around to isolate ones that I want to muck around with.
In double-checking the pinouts, I discovered that there are in fact two parallel pins which both provide the 8V supply to the inverter; I'd missed this before since they both return over the same ground pin. After connecting things up correctly, the panel is now powered and functional.
It's a bit of a hack job at the moment, but it works; the signal decoder and backlight are both operational, giving me a nice... solid black screen.
The real problem is, the composite video jack isn't due in until Monday. That means I have to suffer through an entire weekend knowing that I've got a working LCD, but with no way to actually display stuff on it.
So it has been a day of victory... but, alas, a Pyrrhic victory.