system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Doctor Who] How exactly does the Time War work?

In New Who it there is a pretty large amount of references to both 'before' and 'after' the Time War. And I don't quite understand that as a concept. Now, even with the time war being Time locked, that still doesn't make sense as to how it isn't happening in Classic Who. As far as I understand it, it's a war all across time, so how can it ever begin or end? Besides the time after it was Time locked, shouldn't it have always been taking place?
gpt
You're thinking of time as a straight line that can only be moved across left and right. In Doctor Who it's also possible to move up and down on to new time lines. Up until the 4th Doctors time the universe is on one time line, then after Genisis of the Daleks we move up to a new time line until we get to the Time War which is a chaotic mess. Imagine these straight vertical horizontal lines drawn on a piece of paper then scrumple it up into a ball and then try to follow the lines. The time war doesn't make sense and that's sort of the point and why it had to be stopped.