Hi,
I troubleshooted on #mediawiki a problem with the same symptoms last Sunday, filing bug 15851. However, it seemed to be specific to using the web install to update, and you used the command line script. The fix was setting $wgDBmysql5 = false; on LocalSettings. Try doing it and report back.
Yes, thanks! That solved the problem. The "LocalSettings.php" file defaulted to "$wgDBmysql5 = true;". I'll look into switching over the entire wiki & databases to UTF-8, I hope it goes smoothly but may come back for further assistance.
Thanks again for your help.