It appears that the Options to TemporalData objects are not recoverable or resettable by using Options or SetOptions as one might wish. So an alternative approach may be to use pattern matching and replacement rules as in the following example (using your original code as the example).

newObject = newObject /. {("name" -> _) :> ("name" -> "Happy feet")}

changes the "name" part of the MetaInformation in newObject. And

newObject = 
 newObject /. {(MetaInformation -> x_) :> (MetaInformation -> Flatten[{x, "another" -> "Something"}])} 

Will add the "another" -> "Something" rule to the MetaInformation of newObject.

One could certainly use this sort of approach to write functions that take care of these sorts of changes.