"At least we'll probably never get bored of each other's stories, being from vastly different places a lot of the time. But I'm used to jumping around so it's normal to me at this point, I've been doing it since I was a fresh-faced cadet." So Jack is very old hat at all of this. There is nothing people can say to him here that would surprise him. There could be a world that is a cartoon, one where certain events never happened, one apparently full of robots, etc. He does get that it is overwhelming for anyone else though, so he sympathizes.
Jack shrugs about the jail part. "It wasn't my first or my last time, probably, it could've been a lot worse. I was in there trying to get to a friend to break them out, but they were in another part of the prison, so it was mostly time spent moving positions." Which was not easy! There were a lot of moving parts to figure that out, and he had to move a few floors before he managed to get to the same one as the Doctor. It was all worth it when she smiled at him and they were on a new adventure together.
"Good question. One that all time travelers try to be aware of." Jack has never been good at exactly describing this part, but he thinks that he's better than the Doctor. Who goes with Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey. "Okay so ... time doesn't work the way people think, as in linear and that it is already written and will always happen in a straight line. You can absolutely go back in time and change the future, and some time travelers have attempted to do exactly that." You know, like Jack hopes to do with his one regret.
"The problem is unintended consequences, obviously. You kill the wrong person, all of history changes, you save a couple, the children one of them was supposed to have with someone else will cease existing. And there are situations in which the time traveler is essential to the way the world turns out, that we are supposed to be there and always have been." So it's very confusing! It makes sense to people who are doing it, or at least the very old ones who have. "The general rule of thumb is to do as little as possible and never bother with fixed points in time. That's something that no one is capable of changing, it will always happen."
Jack himself is a fixed point in time and space, but that's a whole other story.
sorry for the long wait, can ignore if you want!
Jack shrugs about the jail part. "It wasn't my first or my last time, probably, it could've been a lot worse. I was in there trying to get to a friend to break them out, but they were in another part of the prison, so it was mostly time spent moving positions." Which was not easy! There were a lot of moving parts to figure that out, and he had to move a few floors before he managed to get to the same one as the Doctor. It was all worth it when she smiled at him and they were on a new adventure together.
"Good question. One that all time travelers try to be aware of." Jack has never been good at exactly describing this part, but he thinks that he's better than the Doctor. Who goes with Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey. "Okay so ... time doesn't work the way people think, as in linear and that it is already written and will always happen in a straight line. You can absolutely go back in time and change the future, and some time travelers have attempted to do exactly that." You know, like Jack hopes to do with his one regret.
"The problem is unintended consequences, obviously. You kill the wrong person, all of history changes, you save a couple, the children one of them was supposed to have with someone else will cease existing. And there are situations in which the time traveler is essential to the way the world turns out, that we are supposed to be there and always have been." So it's very confusing! It makes sense to people who are doing it, or at least the very old ones who have. "The general rule of thumb is to do as little as possible and never bother with fixed points in time. That's something that no one is capable of changing, it will always happen."
Jack himself is a fixed point in time and space, but that's a whole other story.