Podcast: Play in new window | Download
With apologies, the War Doctor just doesn't seem "real" enough to warrant a space on my shelf among the ordinally-numbered Doctor action figures in my collection. As magnificent as John Hurt was, why am I reluctant to include him in the tribe?
You can bury hand in the sand all your like Chip – the story explicitly states that Tennant regenerated into Tennant. It also explicitly states that Hurt is the 9th Doctor. You might not like it (I personally don't like the Tennant-Tennant one) but its there.
I really don't understand why fans don't count Hurt/Second Tennant. Did no-one watch the last half of Matt Smith's last story, the major plot points all revolved around his Doctor having run out of regenerations. The Timelords throw him a new set of regens.
If you reject the extra Doctors, you also reject the story.
Also the bizarre notion that just because you reject what the Doctor stands for somehow that means you can make the regeneration not count? Never understood that. Apparently the way to have unlimited regenerations is to pop down to the local government office and change your name by deed poll each time ("This regeneration I shall called myself Bob! That way the regeneration doesn't count! This regeneration I reject the previous incarnation's ideals, and will only believe in fuzzy bunnies and snow cones! Yeah, that'll do it. I am SO going to live forever")
I am sure you have used the phrase in your podcast before, somewhere "You can't hide from who you are" (its the type of thing you would say, I am sure :)) This phrase seems to doubly apply to the Hurt Doctor.
That you feel you cannot accept Tennant-2 and Hurt is OK – it can be part of what you believe. But canon states, in excruciating detail, that those two are regens. If the story wasn't do determined to drive home the point in very precise plot detail I could understand fans arguing over it. But it wasn't, so you can't.