The Greatest American Hero - Ralph's Uniform and Hero Persona

Ralph's Uniform and Hero Persona

Ralph's uniform grants him the powers of flight, super strength, resistance to injury (including direct bullet hits to areas covered by the suit), invisibility, precognition, postcognition, E.S.P., telekinesis, x-ray vision, super speed, pyrokinesis, holographic vision, shrinking, psychometry, and a sense to detect the supernatural. In the episode "Fire Man" he displays resistance to fire/heat and uses "superbreath" (blowing out a flamethrower), he also uses it in "There's Just No Accounting..." to blow out a molotov cocktail. He also showed signs of being able to control minds when he was exposed to high doses of plutonium radiation. In the second season finale episode "Lilacs, Mr. Maxwell," Ralph is shown to control a dog through a holograph. This may have been an improvisational power of the suit, but was never tried again. In "The Shock Will Kill You," he (or the suit) becomes strongly magnetized.

In the second season episode "Don't Mess Around with Jim," Ralph and Maxwell learn that they are not the first duo who received a uniform. Jim "J.J." Beck had received the suit, and Marshall Dunn was his partner, much like Ralph and Maxwell operated. But Jim was overwhelmed with the power of the suit, and he used it selfishly until it was taken away. It is unknown if there were others before Jim who were visited by the aliens. In "Divorce Venusian Style," the pair meet the alien, whose world was apparently destroyed (which hints as to why it wants to protect humanity) and calls Earth one of the few remaining "garden planets." It is also revealed that there are several other people in seeming "suspended animation" aboard its ship (Bill speculates that they are possible replacements for them). Ralph is given another instruction book—supposedly the aliens's last copy, but he loses it as well, when he and the book shrink to a fraction of their normal sizes, and he is not holding the book when he returns to his original height.

The hero persona never receives a "superhero name," either, although Scarbury sings the Elton John song "Rocket Man" in the pilot. However, in the episode "The Shock Could Kill You," Ralph sarcastically refers to himself as "Captain Gonzo."

Like his own character of Ralph Hinkley/Hanley, William Katt found the suit very uncomfortable and hated wearing it. Producers made various modifications to the suit to help him out, and accommodated him by scheduling shoots so he would not have to wear it all day.