Update failed on Metadata module, any easy fix?
So the solution here was that the backup (done by my ISP) did not fully restore.  I think they forgot to recursively restore and just did the main Drupal root.  Once I asked them if they were sure they restored recursively and there was a long pause (a few hours, at which point the site started working again) they came back and said they'd missed a few files.  

So luckily that solved it.  I did not need to configure anything or run any update.php or such.  Just restored the entire Drupal directory and all subdirs and such, and a database restore to match.  That fixed it.  Whew!