Everything must go! "Battlestar Galactica's" going-out-of-business sale

The Daily News has finally constructed an entertainment web page where you're guaranteed of finding stuff written by staffers instead of dealing with LA.com. And here's a story that's currently on it:

(If you're made of money, you can actually own this.)

Ronald Moore, who adapted the cheesy '70s "Star Wars" knockoff "Battlestar Galactica" into the dark, complex and brooding drama that became a critics darling and a fervent fan favorite, confesses that he wasn't exactly initially keen on the notion of auctioning off its props to the highest bidder once his show shut down production.

"It was like having someone come in and sell off all your family heirlooms," admits Moore, whose show concerns the last known surviving humans struggling to survive against a cybernetic race they created called the Cylons. "I was a little upset about it."

But, he continues, "Now, I'm sort of enthusiastic about it, because realistically, what's going to happen to this stuff? The studios will crate it up in some musty warehouse where it'll not be taken care of and fall to (crap). With an auction, these items will be taken care of; they'll be kept and cherished and traded among people who care."

Moore recalled that while he worked on "Star Trek: The Next Generation," the Enterprise's observation deck was remodeled and a set of gold spacecrafts that had been used as set decoration that he admired were "thrown in a dumpster. I saved 'em. The studio doesn't care. So when I remind myself of that, (the auction's) a great thing. But initially, my reaction was, 'You're gonna what?'"

As "Battlestar Galactica" prepares to sail into the distant reaches of the TV galaxy - the first of its final 10 episodes airs next Friday on the Sci Fi Channel - fans of the show, among TV's most loyal, will be able to bid on props, costumes, set pieces and production art from the series next weekend at the Pasadena Convention Center. Among the items up for grabs: sultry outfits worn by Number Six (Tricia Helfer) and Starbuck's (Katee Sackhoff) uniforms, Cylon blasters, Viper and Raptor helmets and even a 30-foot-long Viper warship.

On Friday, fans are invited to a preview day in which fans can view the items up for bid and hear the show's production, costume and set designers will discuss their contributions to the show. Fans can bid online next weekend on auctionnetwork.com; pins, badges and other smaller items will be available after the live auction on eBay. Some of the proceeds go to the United Way.

No other series has auctioned off so many of its assets just as it leaves the air.

"An auction like this takes a show with a certain loyal audience that's passionate," says Alec Peters, CEO of Propworx, [cq] who has organized the event. "'Battlestar Galactica' and maybe a couple of other shows that you can say that about. And other shows that have loyal followings are more terrestrial: 'Law & Order' is the number-one brand on TV, but how many cool items are there? You could sell (District Attorney) McCoy's suit. With 'Battlestar,' you have so much cool stuff."

Not bad for a show that was met with such virulence when an initial miniseries first appeared in 2003. Purist fans of the 1978 original regarded Moore's sophisticated re-imagining as blasphemy, particularly since Moore had the audacity to turn Starbuck, played in the original show by Dirk Benedict as an inveterate womanizer, into Sackhoff's kick-butt female fighter pilot. Of course, that emerged as just one of Moore's most inspired modifications.

"Entire websites were dedicated to how much people hated this show," Moore recalls with a laugh. "On one of the message boards, someone's avatar was a picture of me with a gun on the side of my head and animated blood spurting out the other side - that was his avatar.

But "by the second season," Moore adds, thanks to overwhelming fan adulation, purist kvetching "all went away."

On the other hand, in recent years the pressure to create the ultimate series finale for beloved shows has escalated. "Seinfeld's" failed finale and "The Sopranos"' controversial (non-)conclusion disappointed longtime fans. Moore conceded to sweating the finale.

"The lion's share of the pressure was internal," he says. "We wanted a good ending for our story, to feel a sense of accomplishment when we walk away from it. We wanted to make the best episode we can and leave it all on the field."

Working on the third season, Moore and his writing team already sensed that the series was in the home stretch and that the fourth season would be its last, but they didn't come up with the concluding storyline until well into the final season.

"We got hung up on plot things breaking the final episode," Moore admits. "We got hung up on the action pieces and the plot. I came home, I was not happy, I took a shower, and while in the shower, I realized: It's really about the characters.

"The next day," he continues. "I went in the writers room and wrote on the whiteboard, 'It's about the characters.' We'll make a simple plot but it'll be a complex story about the people. From then on, it was simply a matter of figuring out the specifics. And everyone was on the same page. I've talked to all the actors and they were really happy with the way their characters ended."

If that's the case, the memorabilia should prove even more valuable to the show's fans.

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA AUCTION
What: Auction of props, set pieces, costumes and production designs from the cult-hit series.
Where: Pasadena Convention Center, 300 E. Green St., Pasadena, Calif.
When: Preview day with appearances throughout the day by key production members, 10 a.m.-5 pm. Friday; live auction, 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Jan. 17 and 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Jan. 18.
Admission: Free with pre-registration at www.auctionnetwork.com (where fans can also bid online).
. More information at www.battlestarprops.com. Smaller items will be available after the live auction on eBay.

- "Battlestar Galactica:" 10 p.m. Friday, Sci Fi Channel.