Bug#854041: me too, but not getting past "apt-get -f install"

[Daniel Pocock]

I've tried upgrading two systems from jessie to stretch

The first one didn't experience this issue, the second one did.  Both
systems had been upgraded through several versions of Debian over many
years, they had not been clean installs of jessie.

I've tried

   dpkg --purge sysvinit
   apt-get -f install

and so far "apt-get -f install" isn't getting past the issue, it fails
with the same error so the system is now in limbo.

Any suggestions what should be attempted next?