Though I cannot in fairness agree with your conclusion of "lame-o" because I felt the film had enough merits to at least make it interesting and watchable, I do agree that it was chock full of just about every manned space exploration movie cliche imaginable.
It was like they had a production meeting beforehand and brainstormed every standard scene from every manned space exploration movie for the past 50 years to include in the movie. Loneliness/isolation, hard decisions, noble sacrifice, story pieced together by surviving log tapes. Uh huh. We are missing an AI super computer going rogue and being chased around the ship by a xenomorph.
****spoilers****** (if you read further)
I think what bothered me more (science geek talking now) is that for the most part the crew would do logical, scientifically valid, realistic things, and then inexplicably (probably for drama/suspense) they would do something unsafe, risky, or not thoroughly redundantly planned for like on a real space programme. Also, I have to comment, the uniforms did not look comfortable or particularly high quality (like space program-y), like chafing zippers, cheap shoes, and unarticulated shoulder/armpits. The space suit was not very convincing either, but I understand, movie budget constraints.
Yeah, I was thinking a possible tether too, but also, crampons, ice-axe or water egress tool, more practically aimed lights and cameras for such a historic EVA (instead of a useless facial selfie cam), and if not a partner, at least a back-up person suited up in the airlock for an emergency rescue. Frozen fuel lines. You'll spend days isolated in a near absolute zero environment and thousands of top engineers/designers not to mention an experienced pilot would have overlooked that. Hyah, really?
Somebody else here commented on this, but I was actually ok with the idea of the tentacled thing at the end. Extremo-phile microbes or proto-algae would have been exciting enough, and most logical. But if one imagines a closed eco-system around a heavily irradiated, warm liquid water environment where early plants require light to photosynthesize, then creatures might evolve that eat the plants which hang out near the light, which might in turn attract phototrope lifeforms which equate light with food or energy. Also, I thought that a mostly clear, bioluminescent "animal" based on a radial symmetry an audacious but not entirely unfounded guess at exo-biology.
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