Yes, the SE print is worse shot to shot than the IB prints.
That’s very interesting. It’s not a complete surprise though given they were working from brand new freshly shot camera negatives in 1977, and in 1995 (or whenever work started on the SE) they were working with o-negs that were not in great shape, and other lab elements that were problematic as well. I had the impression that they didn’t replace the entire o-neg, but rather they cut out all the scenes/shots they thought had problems and then struck new o-neg by doing new composites or working from the master positives. It’s funny actually that they wasted time on doing re-composites for the space shots that probably benefited the least from it!