Eugh. Red Pill mode shouldn't be the default fallback position - I'd really recommend you raise it with Jeff Elkins.

This kind of workaround (and I group the gronmayer solution to the repository mess in here), massively raises the barrier of entry to the NITs. Solving the problems properly doesn't really take much more work, it just requires different people to do it.

Short version: I very strongly believe all software should be in extras (or extras-testing for non-production quality stuff) which no dependencies on any packages which aren't in the default repository list, or in the same repository.

Anything less than that is sub-optimal in so many ways.