Ubuntu Installation :: Skip Specific Upgrade In Synaptic Package Manager?

All of a sudden when I ran an update with the usual
Code:
sudo apt-get upgrade
I got an input / output error for a specific file followed by an exit with dpkg returning error code 1.

In this case the package (ubuntu-docs) is not exactly life threatening, so I would prefer any update process to simply skip that particular package and move onto the ones that are getting held up. I then opened Synaptic Package Manager where I located the erroneous package. I then unmarked the particular package (ie the blob in front of the package name was green, and the status line shows zeroes for all categories (broken, upgrade/install, remove). So far so good. I then found the 'lock version' menu item under the packages menu. I clicked it, and ran the reload thing. After that thought the package was marked for deletion however, and I once again couldn't get by this one bad package.

So (tl/dr perhaps), how can I make Synaptic / apt-get / or whatever to skip this bad package for real so that I can update my system normally going forward? (Why is it that the whole upgrade process is that fragile by the way? Surely there must the the occasional dud package upgrade that people want to skip, no? Having the whole process grind to a halt because of one issue seems border line paranoid to me. Of course on a minimal server installation where every package counts this behavior makes sense perhaps, but on a IMHO bloated plain vanilla ubuntu install?